Just yesterday I was working on something and received a call from an old friend. I forgot to turn on my Focus Mode so the call came through. At that point, I had two good options and one bad one. I could have politely asked to reschedule the call or stepped away from my computer and just talked to my friend. I also could have decided to multitask. I chose poorly. I said to myself, “Self, you can totally talk to this friend and continue this work. You got this.” So off I went for a while, multitasking.

Then I hung up and thought about the advice I gave my friend, that wasn’t as good as it could have been … because I was multitasking. Then today I discovered that the work I was doing at the same time had some errors in it … because I was multitasking.

I think the next time I catch myself multitasking, I’m going to slap myself.