“Boing”…I wonder if that’s a really important email? I better check. Did I miss a Tweet I could use in our content marketing campaign? Maybe I should look at Tweetdeck. What’s the weather going to be like for our event. Let me check my weather app? Wait what did that text from my colleague say?

Today’s marketers can be distracted people. We have so much to do and so much information that it’s hard to concentrate on any one thing.

We want to get so much done in so little time. We feel we have to bounce from one project to the next. We have to get work done fast. We have to do…do…do. We have no time to think.

Multitasking

One solution to having too much to do is multitasking. The logic of multitasking makes sense: Do 2-3 things at the same time and you will get 2-3 times more done. In fact computers when designed to work this way can multiply their “throughput”. But recent research shows when humans try to multitask our efficiency actually drops.

So if you want to be an effective marketer today don’t multitask. It’s actually counterproductive.

Mindfulness

What is “mindfulness”?

Simply put mindfulness is the practice of focusing. It’s much the opposite of multitasking. It’s about staying “in the moment” and focusing on the one task in hand. It’s about being proactive rather than reactive.

Mindful marketers should identify which work is most important out of all the demands that are showered down upon you. Which work will make the biggest difference to the company’s results? Focus on this work. Don’t react to the latest item in your inbox.

Important vs. Urgent

The concept of mindfulness when applied to marketing brings me back to the framework developed by Stephen Covey I discussed in a previous blog post. Covey describes two dimensions that define any activity: urgency and importance.

Whenever you are deciding whether to carry out a task or plan it into your week, Covey advises that you think about whether it is important or just urgent. Tasks that are important and urgent must be carried out first but look at for tasks that are urgent but not important. These are “time sucks” and should often be delegated, automated or ignored. As a marketer today, it is too easy to spend your whole week working on activities that are urgent but not important.

Time well spent

Many of us say we have no time but the data says otherwise. Research, such as the American Time Use Survey, says we do have time but its all a question of how we allocate it.

Meditation

Meditation is part of the practice of mindfulness.

There’s growing evidence that meditation works. It not only centers us for our day, helping us think about what we want to achieve but it actually improves our brain. Meditation is actually exercise for our brain, getting it into better shape.

So maybe it’s time to turn off our distracting gadgets and focus more of our energies on thinking and being in the present. We may actually accomplish more for ourselves and our company.

Mindfulness tells us it’s time to slow down. Time to think before we act. Time to use our time more thoughtfully.