On scalability

A lot of things scale: processes, products, systems, etc. And many of us are looking for ways to scale how we operate to improve productivity, efficiency, cost effectiveness, etc.

But there are some things that don’t scale well. One of those things is our attention.

We live in a world that has accepted multitasking (or, as I have often heard it called, and believe to be more aptly named, task switching) as the most productive way to operate. Numerous studies, however, have shown that multitasking generally makes us less efficient and more prone to mistakes.

The way to scale attention is to not scale it at all. Would you rather make 100% progress on one thing? Or make 1% progress on 100 things?

Be present. Stay laser-focused on the most important thing. And you will out-scale and out-perform the multitaskers.