The Marshmallow Challenge vs. Multitasking: Is it more effective to just get started than to plan for a long time?

Strategic Planning is a guarantee for good results. However, a simple experiment with spaghetti and a marshmallow shows that it does not necessarily make you more productive. But the opposite doesn't help either.

Strategies lead to the goal?

Anyone who plans with foresight, drafts strategies and only makes decisions after careful consideration is generally considered to be more effective than People, which are intuitive or “from the gut” decide. Because in contrast, is a well thought out Strategy well thought out and often even based on scientific research.

It sounds logical that the results have to be better. Or?

A pair of HR recently told me something else: being Companies puts at the Candidate-selection and also to Teambuilding enter the marshmallow challenge. And it seems to prove the opposite.

The Marshmallow Challenge

The books on the subject (advertising)

A pair of Team gets a packet of uncooked spaghetti, twine, duct tape, and a marshmallow. The task: The team has to build the highest possible tower from the spaghetti within a fixed time frame of 18 minutes, and place a marshmallow on top of it. This challenge was tested with different groups, including graduates of Business-Schools, but also with four-year-old kindergarten children.

And now guess which group did better? The results at a glance:

• The tower is 50 centimeters high for an average team.
• Business school graduates only measure 25 centimeters on average.
• CEOs construct structures an average of 60 centimeters. If there is only one CEO working with his secretaries, it will be 80 centimeters.
• Kindergarten children build up to 75 centimeters high.

Why just trying it out is more effective

The explanation for these results is as simple as it is surprising: Business school graduates don't just dwell on vanity and rivalry. They are also trained to strategize on the one and only right Solution to add If that doesn't work, they don't have time to build anything new.

You can tell the CEOs have practical organizational experience. But if you work together with your secretaries and only one sets the tone, you will get even better.

The fact that the kindergarten children do so well is not only due to the fact that they work well together far from rivalry battles; no, they are also simply uninhibited enough to simply try things out. Then, if the tower collapses on the way, just try again. With this learning-by-doingMethod they are obviously more successful than business school graduates and most company bosses.

Better: the strategy of one task

Discounts for your success (advertising)!

So you can see that strategic planning does not always have to lead to better results. Sometimes it's better to just try things out. But that doesn't always apply. On the other hand, multitasking, for example, is often just as fruitless. What helps, however, is the strategy of one task. Let me explain:

Multitasking, the much-touted skill of our time, may not be one at all. Studies show that people are actually not capable of multitasking at all. Maybe you should only do one task a day instead?

I know people who do it like this: "I only ever do one task a day". And even if it doesn't sound contemporary, they might even be right about it. It may seem efficient act, several a day Tasks but I often find that I fail when I try to do too much in one day.

Does multitasking make you dumber than weed?

Best-selling author Martin Wehrle recently commented on this in a post on Best of HR - Berufebilder.de® confirms: According to his surprising statement, there is not only no multitasking, no, it also makes you stupid. As evidence, Wehrle cites the study that we have already written about at imgriff.com and according to which the distraction occurs eMails stupid than smoking weed. Wehrle wrote:

"The Term Multitasking is inhuman: It comes from computer language and describes the ability of an operating system to handle several tasks at the same time. Each of these processes accesses the central brain of the computer, the main processor. This distributes the capacities. But the processes only appear to be happening simultaneously: they happen one after the other at lightning speed.”

In the end, according to Wehrle, it happens to the human Brain what also happens to a computer that has to deal with too many calculation processes at once: It hangs up and gets out. But what helps to prevent it from happening in the first place?

Do only one task a day - that's how it works

mine Opinions After all, the only solution is to actually do less, namely to do just one task per day. Example: If I want to be efficient, I combine going to the post office with handing in the returnable bottles in the supermarket, etc., after all I'm already there and then save myself the trip. Or when I'm going somewhere, especially if it's further away, I think about checking out a few other travel destinations along the way. Result: the whole thing becomes much bigger Stress. Too many things to think about.

If I only do one thing a day, it doesn't happen like that. Then I just go to the post office. Or to the supermarket. Or just fly to my original destination. Reason is that such serial tasks me fast overwhelm: While I'm still doing the one thing, I'm in Head already at the next. Or I have to remember to take everything with me for different occasions, such as the empty bottles and the postal parcel or luggage for several occasions at a travel destination - which, depending on the weather, accounts for half a suitcase load. My personal conclusion therefore: Doing just one thing a day, also in a figurative sense, is actually less stressful.

Top books on the subject

Read text as PDF

Acquire this text as a PDF (only for own use without passing it on according to Terms and conditions): Please send us one after purchase eMail with the desired title supportberufebilder.de, we will then send the PDF to you immediately. You can also purchase text series.

4,99€Buy

Advice on success, goal achievement or marketing

You have Ask round to Career, Recruiting, personal development or increasing reach? Our AI consultant will help you for 5 euros a month – free for book buyers. We offer special ones for other topics IT services

5,00€ / per month   Book

Book eCourse on Demand

Up to 30 lessons with 4 learning tasks each + final lesson as a PDF download. Please send us one after purchase eMail with the desired title supportberufebilder.de. Alternatively, we would be happy to put your course together for you or offer you a personal, regular one eMail-Course - all further information!

29,99€Buy

Skate eBook as desired

If our store does not offer you your desired topic: We will be happy to put together a book according to your wishes and deliver it in a format of yours Choice. Please sign us after purchase supportberufebilder.de

79,99€Buy