Time Efficiency — The hunt for complementary activity

Multi-Tasking is not an efficient way to use your time. This has been well established and some of the arguments were outlined in my previous post here. That said, there is an aspect of seeking greater time efficiency that does border on multi-tasking. That is seeking to use your time to tackle two separate things that complement one another. So, a key component of our time efficiency is the hunt for complementary activity.

This is not the same as killing many birds with one stone. That involves doing one thing that achieves more than one aim or benefits more than one purpose.

Complementary activities are separate activities that will serve each other, or fit together in some way. They will suffer a little from the multi-tasking or switch tasking element, but the judgement is that the benefits outweigh the costs.

This is normally because the costs are small.

When one activity doesn’t require much focus

Sometimes you will need to do something and actually, you don’t really need to think about it all that much.

Every day, we either need to wash up or we need to empty our dishwasher. This is an ideal time to catch up on YouTube videos or podcasts. Or even just watch whatever TV show or film you fancy.