Multi-tasking

I'm a fan of Shepard Smith. I listen to his show on Sirius radio while I drive home from work. I find his conversational approach to telling news refreshing. You never know what he is going to say, or how he is going to say it. I found this interview of him very interesting. He talks about skipping verbs sometimes (who needs them), and how technology has revealed to him his ability to multi-task when processing information from different sources at the same time (tv, internet, phone, etc).

Here's a quote from the interview. "Technology has taught us that we can do more things at one time, that we can take in more information and process it more quickly than we could 15 years ago. I know I can. When this computer thing first started, I couldn't deal with the computer, and the e-mail, and the phone, and the TV, and all of that at one time. Well, I can now, and everybody I know can. We don't have the patience.

It's not unusual for me to be on a conference call, following along with the slides on the live meeting link, instant messaging co-workers, and working in JDE at the same time. Another example. Watching the race on tv, listening to the scanner off the internet, instant messaging my brother, and browsing the internet.

We all do it, which makes the next point even more important.

He goes on to say, "You sort of eliminate the things that get in your way in this era of multitasking, and sometimes the verbs just aren't necessary. It's, "President Bush in Washington today." I don't need to say, "He is in Washington today." "President Bush in Washington today, talking with Colin Powell, getting ready for a trip overseas. Telling others yesterday about what happened when, dah, dah, dah, dah." You don't need all of those verbs."

I can find the link between delivering the news to communicating in business today. You have to be pithy, to the point, and you had better make your argument quick. You can't dance around the subject and ramble on, or your message will get lost in the noise. As he says, we have lost our patience.

To get back to story telling, I was recently reading some material from work that taught how to use story telling to help mentor other employees. Interesting stuff. Studies show that people retain information better when provided to them in a story format.

For those of you who are not familiar with Shep, here's a video. For those tasked with coaching others and/or getting the point across quickly and in a manner which aids retention, read the linked article.