We are all bad at multi-tasking.
How many of you waking up in the morning with a lot of ideas that you wish you could execute in the same seconds you get up from bed?
Some of us or most of us did but turned out to fail. even the essential things that you should do on that day, you didn’t do it.
And you lost and waste your valuable time and then you regret a lot of things that you should do in the first place before you cover yourself with the blanket and sleep.
Recently, I watched some interviews of Jonathan Ive, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates. And one thing that I learned from them, especially from Steve Jobs. That we were born with unlimited creative ideas in our head, but to execute something successfully is not about how many things that we have made in a day, but how many “no” that we decide on all ideas that appeared in our brain.
Saying “no” is a remarkable decision that could push each of our plans to execute perfectly.
Saying “no” to some expenses in our shopping cart plans will save a bunch of cash in our savings.
Saying “no” to some invitations will make you more productive every 24 hours that we’re given each day.
And you’ll have your own “no”s to every circumstance that you face in your life.
When you could say “no” to this or that. you could eliminate a lot of things, sort them out. And you end up having few options and you could focus on actual things that are more important than any random plans that you thought it was great.
Take a good look at Steve Jobs and all the products he created. At the first time, he “re-invent” a phone that is now called iPhone. It was a revolutionary product and change the whole industry, raised the standards and the stake of the competition is quite high. Since iPhone 4, it’s a kinda slow update for iPhone when we compare it to the Android line-up. Other competitors were creating more optional phones, range from screen sizes, eye-tracking for users so that the phone could scroll automatically while the users read something on their screens, widget things, face unlock, ultrasonic fingerprint reader, and so on.
As an iPhone user, there were times when I felt like iPhone was no longer innovative like I wished. In some features, I kinda envy how resilient the Android is. As we knew, from iPhone 6 to iPhone 8, it seems that the design was quite the same, some incremental upgrades were added but it felt no quite enough at that time.
But when I look at the timelines, one thing that I learn from it that they were slow in progress but they’re really focusing on what they did to provide users with fully baked features. They were not rushing on some incredible features that were available on Android in the first place. They were saying a lot of no-s to million ideas so that they could create a fully-functioning phone for customers.
“They actually didn’t invent the smartphone or the personal computer or headphones, but what they did do is redesign and streamline all those products to work together.” — CNBC Make It
They really know how to say “no”, delay, wait on their breakthrough features ready, and works for the public although you’ve already found it on other platforms.
And when it arrives, you’re gonna feel it so seamlessly and it works.
From that example, I could learn much about how crucial our “no” is in our life.
Multi-tasking is great but whenever you could focus on the most important things that you’re obliged to execute. you could do more, you could achieve more than you could imagine.
Distraction is the great temptation of every multi-tasker that exists in this world. we all think multi-tasking is so great and we all forget, that greatness of multi-tasking sometimes or even most of the time makes you procrastinate and you found yourself wasting your valuable time. *well, we’re still far from time machine kinda things so we still have no option to rewind the time.
Well, saying “no” is not easy as it looks tho. Especially when you say “no” to some invitations from your friends or even more to the dear of your heart, canceling some party, meetings or you name it. to be honest, it’s hard.
At least, it’s something that we should learn to apply some disciplines and integrity in our life but be humble at the same time.
A superb skill of communication is required here.
Yet, we all can’t please everyone. it sounds a bit selfish, but in this developing-internet-mental health-awareness era, we should leave some space to focus on ourselves.
One more thing…
We should not be afraid in saying “no” in all decisions that we face. When you started to be friendly in saying “no”, our life will be much easier and it will open another door of “yes”.
These things were just in my mind, thank you for taking your time to this post. I wish that you could learn something and apply it to your life.
