The insidiousness of ‘just this once’

I have a note on my desk with the words “DO NOT MULTITASK” written in large print.

I wrote this down because I know better. I know that even the slightest distraction can serve as a buoy that rushes you from the depth of problem solving or information processing straight back to the surface which requires me to make yet another laborious dive back down.

Yet, when I’m in meetings or working deeply, I am still often tempted to do something else:

Check Slack or Instagram. Respond to a funny text.

I will think to myself: “just this once. What’s the harm?”

This is what Clay Christensen refers to as the trap of marginal thinking.

If I only gave into distraction once, then I would agree that the actual harm is very little.

The problem, and this is the insidious thing about seemingly one-time exceptions, is that this behavior generally knows no bounds. The first exception somehow grants permission for you to make a second, and a third etc.

Suddenly, before you know it, the day — worse, a lifetime — is littered with exceptions that you never intended to make.

The net result is you ending up on a completely different trajectory that you never intended to be on. In my case, one characterized with an abundance of distraction and very little progress on the things that I actually care about.

Just as the choice to make the first exception can be far more harmful than you initially imagined, the choice to not allow the first exception can have profoundly positive longterm implications.