Having to take on multiple responsibilities at once may be overwhelming. People are really bad at multi-tasking on brain-intensive activities, so finding a way to meet all these expectations may be daunting.

The most immediate solution to this is to do one, and then the other, in sequence. Although this is reasonable in some cases, there are other times when this is far from efficient.

Consider, for example, that we have two tasks at hand. We are working on the first, and plan to start on the second as soon as we finish. But wait! The second task requires that someone does something for us. If we wait until we finish the first task, we’re going to be wasting a lot of time when we want to start the second task, but we can’t.

Something I learnt from a manager early in my career is to have a mindset of working in parallel. This doesn’t mean to do everything at once, but to sequence our work effectively and help others who are working on something that will unblock our own tasks.

Keep the Ball Rolling

One way to think about this is through a team sport analogy. In some team sports like football or basketball, the player with the ball has all the attention, while the others will move around the field in a strategic way so that the team can win the game.

If we have the ball, that means that all the attention is on us, and it’s our turn to make the next move. If that move requires a pass, we want to make it at the right time, without unnecessary delay, so we can generate more opportunities.

The alternative, delaying the pass, means to miss a chance to score, or have a lower score in that game due to idle time. We can also apply that analogy when working in team projects, particularly in software development.

Everyone in a team or company is (or should) aligned towards the success of the company. We’re all on the same team, playing the same game.

When we need someone else’s help with something, we should raise the request as soon as possible, and if they come back to us with questions, we aim at replying without further delay.

Note that all we need to do this is the willingness to stop what we’re doing and reply to requests from others. No special tools are required.

We should use some judgement and clearly label the priority or impact of our requests. Every time we stop what we’re doing to reply or help someone move forward with something that will unblock a task on our side, there’s a context switch penalty. But if the task is important, delaying our response will usually cost more than the interruption. And if it’s not, we should say so clearly, out of respect for our teammates’ time.

Cheers!
José Miguel

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