This excellent article in Time about “Multitasking”, and the sidebar The Case for Doing One Thing at a Time, 16 January 2006, had some really good quotes from Suze Orman, the diva of personal finance:
Personal-finance guru Suze Orman, despite an exhausting array of media and entrepreneurial commitments, utterly refuses to check messages, answer her phone or allow anything else to come between her and whatever she’s working on. “I do one thing at a time,” she says. “I do it well, and then I move on”
“I, more than anybody I’ve ever met, do not believe in multitasking,” says Orman, 54. “I think it’s the absolute ruination of the perfection of a project.”
and the best one…
Sure, Orman has the usual battery of electronic devices — in fact, she runs a paperless office but has strict rules for using her gadgets. “When I am writing, I don’t answer phones. I don’t care what else is going on,” she says. She has a cell phone but never leaves it on. “You can’t call me. I only call you. I think you have to stop thinking you are at everyone else’s beck and call.” Silence, she adds, is critical. “You cannot complete your thoughts with everything ringing.”
Man; I like her philosophy; she must have been a software engineer in her previous life!