​One of the particular challenges I have observed, as I work from home all the time these days, is that it provides opportunities for, and accentuates the challenges, of trying to do several things at the same time. For example, reading emails, answering urgent IM’s and also trying to make a cup of tea - whilst at the same time participating in a conference call or online training session. Unless you are particularly and unusually gifted this tends to result in some or even most of these parallel activities being done poorly. 
 
It also seems inevitable that the very moment you stop paying full attention to the conference call because your mobile just rang, someone decides to describe a complex business scenario – and then ask you a critical question. You can either then (a) bluff and make up an answer (dangerous) (b) lie and say your internet went down just at that very moment and ask them to say it all again (devious) or (c) be truthful and just say you weren’t listening so please repeat (embarrassing).
 
Wikipedia sagely observes: Human multitasking is an apparent human ability to perform more than one task, or activity, at the same time. An example of multitasking is taking a phone call while driving a car. Multitasking can result in time wasted due to human context switching and apparently causing more errors due to insufficient attention.
 
This blog suggests that As multiple studies have confirmed, true multitasking—doing more than one task at the same time—is a myth and that amongst other things it impacts your short-term memory, leads to increased anxiety, and causes more mistakes and less productivity.
 
A Harvard Business Review article You Can’t Multitask, So Stop Trying reinforces this view Based on over a half-century of cognitive science and more recent studies on multitasking, we know that multitaskers do less and miss information commenting We have a brain with billions of neurons and many trillion of connections, but we seem incapable of doing multiple things at the same time.
 
And it is apparently true that men are worse at this – see a medical article Why men might find multitasking more challenging which suggests that from a psychological point of view, “task-switching” may be a more accurate term. Findings in neuroscience and psychology suggest that during what is commonly referred to as “multitasking,” the brain actually performs a task, stops, and switches to the next one, all in a very short span of time. It then cites research which suggests that women are better at task-switching than men.
 
See also this Forbes article  Multitasking Damages Your Brain And Career, New Studies Suggest  which comments Research conducted at Stanford University found that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers also found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.
 
However, assuming we are always going to be forced to multitask to some extent, here is some good advice around on how best to achieve this. See, for example,  this blog aimed at entrepreneurs How to Train Your Brain to Multitask Effectively which comments that 'Effective multitasking' is sort of an oxymoron. "The human brain doesn't really multitask," says Art Markman, cognitive psychologist and author of Smart Thinking (Perigee, 2012). "What the human brain does is what I call time-sharing." It then suggests ways of managing this such as working on related tasks together.
 
See also this article 12 Tips to boost your multitasking skills or this Wikihow article (with pictures!) which quite sensibly suggests Work on one thing at a time, but alternate. Jugglers may have many objects in the air, but they usually manipulate only one at a time.
 
My practical advice, going back to the conference call scenario, is to be very aware when you are on camera (Zoom starts with video enabled) and mute your speaker phone or headset whilst you try to answer a call on your mobile – or shout at the dog!
 
As American entrepreneur and best-selling author Gary W Keller says Multi-tasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.

I attended a virtual training course recently on legal developments given by Professor Edwin Peel of the Oxford University Law Faculty. He specialises in contract and commercial law and is in my view a true expert who I always learn from. And yet when asked a question he said there were no cases that provided an exact answer - at least that he knew of. Even such an accomplished lawyer and lecturer recognised the boundaries of his knowledge and respected them.
 
This is as very much as it should be. The people to be feared most in professional and business life are those who are always right and will brook no argument or opposition. These are individuals who whilst often very clever and even accomplished cannot seemingly tolerate a different view or perspective. This tendency increases and is reinforced the longer they practice or manage.
 
The problem is what if they are wrong or fail to consider others’ viewpoints or recent developments in their field. Nobody can know everything and knowing what you do and always looking to expand that knowledge is a great asset. Jim Collins the author of the book Good to Great also said “The best students are those who never quite believe their professors.” That is because they question everything and do not assume what is right.
 
And it is very easy as a specialist professional person or senior manager to have a tendency to be always right and to jump to conclusions. If we are honest we have all done this to some extent. The Cambridge English dictionary says “If you are dogmatic, you are certain that you are right and everyone else is wrong”.
 
I also found this article The Dangers of Dogmatism which says Dogmatism has been defined as the unfounded positiveness in matters of opinion; arrogant assertion of opinions as truths. .....Dogmatism gets individuals into trouble when they ignore evidence that does not support their line of thinking, when individuals engage in confirmatory bias (filter out evidence that goes against one’s beliefs), and when individuals are unable to tolerate conflicting perspectives.
 
Here is a blog How to Avoid Having Your Beliefs Become Dogma, interestingly from the sales community that suggests What makes dogma so dangerous is that it doesn’t allow for new and conflicting information. It proposes that to a to avoid a fixed mindset like this you should allow your beliefs to be questioned, purposely seek conflicting ideas and become agnostic – be open to using whatever works and whatever the circumstances demand.
 
This matters in management as well as in providing advice. This Forbes article Is Your Dogmatic Leader Suffocating Innovation? cites research which concluded that the reason managers who scored low in dogmatism responded better to constructive ideas was because they were able to take the perspective of their team members.
 
And great thinkers and leaders seem to concur on the challenges of being over dogmatic.
 
Bertrand Russell commented Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.
 
Albert Einstein observed The world is so full of possibilities that dogmatism is simply indecent.
 
While finally John F Kennedy in an address to Yale University on 11 June 1962 said Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.