While I hesitate to admit it, I occasionally read the Size Matters column at  Above the Law by the pseudonymous Valerie Katz.  That she uses an alias is completely understandable, given her role of representing the small law version of an intellectual void and the disturbing picture beside her name.  But this one struck me as worthy of further discussion.

After a critical opening paragraph about the efficacy of eating chocolate to get “skinnier,” she writes:

Continuing in that vein, I found an article that confirms my long-held views on how to succeed as a small-firm lawyer: take frequent breaks, go on vacation, nap, and wear sweatpants. Don’t believe me? Check this out….

According to Tony Schwartz in his article The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time, multitasking is a productivity killer. Schwartz argues that mutitasking is the reason that 25-50% of the work force is burned out. Multitasking splits one’s attention such that one never completely focuses on one task, and spends a longer time to complete various tasks. Worse yet, multitasking “relentlessly burn[s] down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour.”

Initially, Katz misapprehends the gist of the article from Harvard Business Review.  Not only does it not promote the wearing of sweatpants (is this a woman fantasy, as I’m unaware of any men who dream of the day they can come to work in sweatpants), but the focus is on multitasking, and the damage it does to one’s health and productivity.

Why is it that between 25% and 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work?

It’s not just the number of hours we’re working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time.

What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. It’s like an itch we can’t resist scratching, even though scratching invariably makes it worse.

Schwartz goes on to list a number of activities which, he asserts without much explanation, are common.

Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? Do you bring your laptop to meetings and then pretend you’re taking notes while you surf the net? Do you eat lunch at your desk? Do you make calls while you’re driving, and even send the occasional text, even though you know you shouldn’t?

I don’t, except for eat lunch at my desk and play Spider Solitaire when I’m bored on a phone call, but your mileage may differ. From this Schwartz goes on the list a number of things that can be done to cure the resultant burn out.

How about this? Just stop doing it. 

Schwartz accepts as a given that we are utterly incapable of living the hard-pressed multitasking life, playing with toys because we have them and can’t possibly take our eyes off the screen, even as we sit in the presence of another living person for the ostensible purpose of having a conversation.  Rather than blame the iToy, he urges employers to give their people breaks and vacations.

That people need time away from work, both to recharge as well as rest their synapses, it’s not because they can’t be expected to divert their eyes from their iPad.  With careful planning, one can structure ones work so that there is time to get away. This is a good thing, even a necessary thing.  But not because we’re too weak to control our love of shiny things.

What’s worse is that Schwartz neglects to mention that multitasking is nasty lie we tell ourselves, that we can do seven things at once and that somehow makes us “special.”  Here’s the harsh reality for those of you who put multitasking on your resume as if it’s a positive: It means you do  seven things poorly rather than one thing well. You think differently? Unless you’re superman, you’re fooling yourself.

Initially suspecting that multitaskers possessed some rare and enviable qualities that helped them process simultaneous channels of information, Professor Nass had been “in awe of them,” he said, acknowledging that he himself is “dreadful” at multitasking. “I was sure they had some secret ability. But it turns out that high multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy.”

Hard work requires focus.  It requires thought.  When the golden ring is completing a bunch of tasks rather than completing tasks well, what you get is tasks finished poorly.  That may be good enough in some other occupation, but it’s not acceptable for a lawyer.

Ironically, Schwartz concedes this to be true:

I know this from my own experience. I get two to three times as much writing accomplished when I focus without interruption for a designated period of time and then take a real break, away from my desk. The best way for an organization to fuel higher productivity and more innovative thinking is to strongly encourage finite periods of absorbed focus, as well as shorter periods of real renewal.

Yet, nowhere does he state the obvious, that clutching the iPad, iPhone, iToy all day long in your grubby little hand will not only burn you out, but prevent you from focusing on a single task and performing it well. Here’s a concept: When some extraneous junk causes you to have problems, rid yourself of the extraneous junk. Compensating for it elsewhere is only as necessary as the junk itself. You need air and food. You do not need 24/7 access to email and Facebook. Problem solved.

As for whether you wear sweatpants while working hard, that’s up to the person signing your paycheck, but adds nothing to the mix that I can see.

The point is that while breaks and vacations are needed from time to time to recharge ourselves, when you are busy at work, be busy at work.  Do not twit, text, surf or pretend you’re Pavlov’s dog whenever you hear the sound of a digital chime.  You can’t do it, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise.