A client recently showed me a cartoon about how to keep one’s desk cleared: replacing the Inbox on the desk with a trash can. Sometimes we may dream about being able to do that, but then reality creeps in and the stacks remain. However there is another use of the word “trashing” that is pertinent to time management and organization: ‘Time Trashing’.

In my posting titled “No One is Good at Multitasking” I wrote about what it happens when we try to do two things at once: What actually occurs is a mental traffic jam where eventually one item breaks through, followed close behind by a second, and then a third. They may be so close together that it seems simultaneous, but in actuality one preceeds the next. When MIT students were given two simple tasks to perform at the same time, identifying shapes and letters or colors, they could not do it and lost their composure. Once they were allowed to switch back and forth, they could do it, but it was very slow because they were forcing their brains to fire in different directions so quickly.

Trashing is what happens when more time is spent switching between tasks than actually accomplishing useful work. The phrase originated in the era of large time-sharing mainframe computers. When too many people were attempting to access the system at once, it created an overload as the computer was forced to allot resources in multiple directions. The system might slow down to a crawl. Those trying to work, who may not have known how many others were also placing demands on the mainframe, would be sitting around complaining about the processing time.

While organizing your work space and your personal life is positive, make sure that you do not spend more time on the planning than in actually doing the work. Writing and rewriting multiple lists of ToDo items would be a simple example.

In my time management seminars I am comfortable guaranteeing that if you spend one day (our “8-Hour Miracle!”), you will get all of your time back in the next week and be working ahead for the rest of the year. That is a positive return. However making numerous small attempts to reorganize, without putting systems in place to keep the same situations from recurring, would be an example of trashing your efforts.