Last month, I was reading Andy Hunt's blog and came across this interesting quote from Pablo Picasso:

"You must always work not just within but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery and you create a feeling of strength in reserve."

This is a really interesting quote in light of some of the reading I've been doing lately on multi-tasking, context switching and work interruptions.  Multi-tasking, context-switching and interruptions can be the biggest killers to the effectiveness and efficiency of agile teams.  According to David E. Mayer, who is a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan, "Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes.  Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ability to process information." 

Unfortunately for most of us in the software development world (and the "new" world at large), we have a plethora of technology at our disposal that we heavily rely upon to "manage" our multi-tasked lives.  We firmly believe that Outlook, our Blackberries, iPods, Instant Messaging, multiple monitors and other cool things will help us get through our days more effectively.  The truth is, they don't.  They provide too many distractions from what we get paid to do...develop software. 

A recent context switching study conducted by Microsoft Research and the University of Illinois examined diaries of the daily tasks performed by a variety of users.  What they found was that 45% of the reported tasks in the diaries were project-related or routine tasks that were part of the users jobs.  That figure would be astounding on its own, but when considered along with the tasks that comprise the other 55%, you'll really be amazed.  23% of the daily tasks were related to e-mail and 13% were related to tracking their multiple tasks.  That's 36% of time spent managing email and tasks!  The remainder of the tasks were pretty evenly split between phone calls (8%), meetings (6%), and personal time (5%). 

I have personally fallen prey to this same pattern, especially with regard to emails.  I've tried several solutions to the issue including e-mail free Fridays, closing Outlook, disabling my IM client, turning off my cell phone, etc.  They've all been somewhat effective in creating more focus on my work.  However, the most effective solution I have found to my email "problem" came from Tim Ferriss' book The 4-Hour Work Week.  It's very simple.  Check your email twice a day.  I check mine at around noon and 4:00 (I don't check it first thing in the morning).  If you're going to do this, set up an email auto-response in your email client that says something like mine does (thanks to Tim for the "template"):

"Due to my high current workload, I am checking and responding to my e-mails twice a day at 12:00 P.M. MST and 4:00 MST.  If you have an urgent request that cannot wait until those times, please call me on my office phone at (123) 987-6543. Thank you for understanding this move to more efficiency and effectiveness.  It helps me accomplish more to serve you better."

It sounds a bit extreme, and I received more than my share of concerned comments when I first implemented my lean e-mail diet plan, but over time it worked.  You may not be able to use this idea, but the general advice I'm trying to get out there is, don't rely on technology to manage your multi-tasking.  It never works.  Instead, focus on managing those technologies so that they don't interfere with your effectiveness and efficiency.