​I heard of a new computer term recently - thrashing. This is when a computer tries to switch very rapidly from one task to another and as a result effectively does nothing at all. It gets itself into a sort of digital limbo and cannot function. Here is how Wikipedia defines the phenomena In computer science, thrashing occurs when a computer's virtual memory resources are overused, leading to a constant state of paging and page faults, inhibiting most application-level processing. This causes the performance of the computer to degrade or collapse.

I sometimes see this behaviour in the professional working world and have indeed experienced it myself. These days we are bombarded incessantly with information and communications and requests for advice and support from clients on all manner of media. After a while even the most capable, competent and effective amongst us risk crumbling under this sort of pressure, and start cutting corners.

A natural tendency is then a bit like the computer to start jumping from one task to another trying to apply some form of logic without ever actually completing anything. In order to cope we cease properly assessing the tasks we are being asked to do and instead of carefully looking at each one in turn and dealing with it properly, jump rapidly to conclusions perhaps applying a standard approach that has worked on other cases. Here is an interesting article on the subject Overgeneralising and Jumping to Conclusions: What It Is and How to Stop which comments We also tend to think like this because jumping to conclusions and generalising saves time as it’s easier to quickly jump to a conclusion and generalise than it is to take the time to dig through all the facts and reach a more accurate conclusion.

It’s a bit like answering exam questions at school or college. The cardinal rule is first to read the exam question carefully and then apply your knowledge. Instead it is very, very easy to glance at the question, make a rapid assessment as to what it appears to be asking - and then regurgitate whatever hard earned knowledge you think is relevant - before jumping to the next question and making the same mistake. Your approach will inevitably be reflected in poorer marks than your knowledge and hard work deserve.

In professional practice making assumptions like this about what we are being asked is I suggest very dangerous. It may look at a first glance like your client or patient or customer has a particular problem, one you have dealt with many times over. In reality on a closer examination the advice you are asked for is not what you at first thought at all. It may even be that the question you are asked masks a deeper issue that careful analysis and questioning will bring to the surface. As the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov advises “Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”
 
In war making the wrong assumptions can be disastrous. The Germans in June 1944 were well prepared for an Allied landing in France in the Second World War, but had been deceived as to the location of the attack, expecting an assault on France’s Pas de Calais region, 150 miles northeast of Normandy where the attack actually occurred. The first wrong assumption. Then to compound the error as discussed in this article they assumed bad weather would prevent the landing. A number of key German commanders were absent from their posts during the critical first hours of June 6, 1944. Believing that the Allies would not invade during a violent Channel storm on June 5, Admiral Theodor Krancke, the naval commander in the west, was on his way to Bordeaux. Maj. Gen. Edgar Feuchtinger, commander of the 21st Panzer Division, was heading to Paris to see his mistress; the commander of the Merville Battery on the far eastern flank of the invasion area was in bed with his. 

The simple and obvious solution is to focus on and resolve one problem at a time before moving on to the next challenge. Even if this means just concentrating on the Skype or Teams call you are on and getting that right before answering the 6 emails and 5 IM’s and two phone messages that have hit your inbox whilst you have been on the call. Here is a good Forbes article on the subject, albeit with a slightly different focus, Stop Trying To Be Good At Many Things, And Focus On Mastering One, which advises  many people by default are so perpetually distracted by all of the opportunities that we're now fortunate to have that they never become great at anything. It quotes Albert Einstein “Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.”

Of course we have to be flexible and to manage lots of different tasks, but to use a medical analogy you can only operate on one patient at a time. Imagine a surgeon holding a scalpel in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. Or a barrister in court trying to answer an email whilst cross examining a key witness.

It is of course still absolutely critical to prioritise tasks. A communication from your managing partner or head of department or anybody from the so called C-suite (CEO, CFO or CIO etc) is intrinsically likely to be more important and worth spending valuable time on first. Even then an absolute focus on the request is vital - failing to do so and being distracted by something else would be foolish and could even be very damaging to your business or even career. Here is an interesting Harvard Business Review article How to Focus on What’s Important, Not Just What’s Urgent  which asks the question Do you get to the end of the day and feel that you’ve met your most pressing deadlines but haven’t accomplished anything that’s fundamentally important? It highlights the risk of concentrating on things with deadlines It’s natural to want to get deadline-driven tasks squared away and off your mental to-do list. A paradox many people face is that our most meaningful tasks are less likely to have deadlines than tasks that are relatively unimportant.
 
Nevertheless, like a computer we cannot thrash around or we become ineffective. We have to focus on and complete one task and do it properly before, however rapidly, we must move on to the next one.
 
See 12 Quotes on Focusing On One Thing At A Time And Not Multi-Tasking for some great quotes on the topic including the Latin writer Publilius Syrus To do two things at once is to do neither and Gary Keller, author of The One Thing You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once.

​We live in a fairly traditional part of England and still have our milk and various other produce delivered three times a week to our doorstep. The milkman or woman is a humble figure whose fortunes seemed to all intents and purposes to be to have been declining in recent years. We can easily buy all our milk in plastic bottles from the supermarket along with other dairy products. They are not heralded in famous children’s stories like the postal service in Postman Pat and fire fighters in Fireman Sam. And yet quietly and unexpectedly they have continued to be a regular feature in many areas and are now seeing something of a revival.
 
Firstly, they deliver milk and orange juice etc. in recyclable glass bottles which is now a huge environmental tick. Better still they have traditionally always used electric milk floats again helping to combat global warming. And now they embrace the Internet and online ordering and during the COVID-19 lockdown have helped deliver essential products. I also used until fairly recently to meet our milkman every Saturday to find out the bill for the week and then write out a bank cheque (remember those) for our order. Now we place our order on-line (and can easily change it) and the correct payments are taken from my bank account online every Thursday.
 
In fact, milk and other deliveries to your door when combined with online ordering and a reasonable variety of produce turns out to be success story with a number of interesting lessons for all businesses and professional practice.
 
First don’t give up and persevere through hard times. I like this Forbes article These 7 Qualities Lead To Perseverance When Faced With Adversity which suggests that “Resilient individuals trust there is a gift, lesson or opportunity in every challenging situation” commenting, for example, that “when we're supportive and encouraging to ourselves in response to disappointment and failure, we bounce back more easily; alternatively, when we criticize and undermine ourselves, we struggle with forgiving ourselves and moving one when things don't go according to plan”. As the French poet Victor Hugo said "Perseverance, secret of all triumphs." while the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow advised"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody."
 
Second recognise and build on advantages and positive behaviour in business, like deliveries being environmentally friendly. See this Harvard Business Review Article Learning to Learn which comments that In the words of Arie de Geus, a business theorist, “The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.” It suggests the attributes you need to do this are aspiration, self-awareness, curiosity, and vulnerability. Learning from success not just from failure is I suggest critical. Research at the University of Chicago suggests Contrary to common beliefs about learning from failure, you learn more from success. Ayelet Fishbach, an expert on motivation and decision making at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business suggests: “We should understand that by exposing ourselves to failure, we might not be giving ourselves the best chance to learn.”
 
Third  recognise that along the way as things change generally for the better you may lose something as well and try and do something about this. For example, we know our milkman by name (Pete) and we would chat when I used to meet him every week to give him the cheque and we give Christmas cards and a Christmas box. He is named as our milkman on their website. Maybe more could be made of this in a social media context. 
 
Finally, don’t write off the humble or maybe mundane person in your team – it is easy to take milk deliveries for granted. If you ask and involve them it’s is surprising how they have an answer the more confident articulate members have missed. Returning to a Forbes article 13 Habits Of Humble People it seems that a lot can be learned from humble people whether they be leaders or lowly team members - Humility displays a willingness to learn and become better--two things that everybody should cultivate.
 
And if you think I am just talking about this from a limited local perspective,  see this 2018 Financial Times Magazine article Why glass milk bottle deliveries are back which discusses this very trend and quotes Patrick Muller chief executive of Milk & More (from whom we ultimately buy our milk) David Attenborough has reignited people’s love of the great British milkman.