How good is your multitasking? MSPs can try this simple game to find out

Most people think they multitask well. Switching between tickets, chat and email feels productive. It costs more than it feels like: Gloria Mark’s research at UC Irvine found that after an interruption, people take about 23 minutes on average to get back to the task they were on.

This game makes the cost visible in two minutes. Play it with your team.

The multitasking game

Think of the tasks you do in a day. A task is a unit of work with a clear start and a clear finish. The question the game answers: is it faster to work one task from start to finish before the next, or to work several at once?

Setup

You need two people:

• The player
• The timekeeper, with a stopwatch and a whiteboard

Round 1: count to 10

1. The timekeeper asks: “Can you count to 10 in a loud, clear voice?”
2. The timekeeper counts down 3, 2, 1 and starts the stopwatch.
3. The player counts from 1 to 10 as fast as possible.
4. The timekeeper stops the stopwatch and writes the time on the whiteboard.

Round 2: recite the alphabet to J

1. The timekeeper asks: “Can you recite the alphabet from A to J?”
2. The timekeeper counts down 3, 2, 1 and starts the stopwatch.
3. The player recites A to J as fast as possible.
4. The timekeeper stops the stopwatch and writes the time on the whiteboard.

Round 3: alternate the two

1. The timekeeper explains: alternate letters and numbers, “A, 1, B, 2” and so on, up to “J, 10”. No fingers, no paper.
2. The timekeeper counts down 3, 2, 1 and starts the stopwatch.
3. The player recites the sequence. For the timekeeper’s reference: “A, 1, B, 2, C, 3, D, 4, E, 5, F, 6, G, 7, H, 8, I, 9, J, 10”. Don’t interrupt, even if the player stumbles or gives up.
4. When the player gets it right, stop the stopwatch and write down the time. If they finished with a mistake, they go again.

Most players can’t get round 3 right on the first try. Those who do take far longer than rounds 1 and 2 put together, even though round 3 is the same twenty items.

Let a few people play, compare times, and talk as a team about what the difference means for a day of tickets and projects.

What the game shows

Counting and reciting the alphabet are about the simplest tasks there are, and switching between them still slows everyone down and causes mistakes. Tickets and project work are far more complex, so every switch costs more:

• Mental overhead. Engineers spend energy keeping track of what they were doing on each open ticket, which leaves less for the actual problem.
• Errors that spread. A mistake made mid-switch, such as a configuration change applied to the wrong system, often causes more work downstream.
• Shortcuts. Distracted work leans toward quick fixes over proper ones, and the quick fixes come back as tickets.

Finishing one task before starting the next is faster. The hard part is doing that on a busy service desk with dozens of tickets, several projects and constant interruptions.

Why the PSA makes it harder

PSAs such as ConnectWise, Autotask and HaloPSA show work as lists and reports and leave the sorting to each tech. That makes it easy to:

• start several tickets at once,
• lose track of what matters most,
• and disagree about the status and priority of a ticket.

Keeping a team on one thing at a time with Kanban

A Kanban board turns the lesson from the game into daily practice:

1. Work in progress is visible. Everyone sees how many tickets each person has open.
2. WIP limits stop the juggling. With a limit of two or three tickets in progress per tech, finishing comes before starting. How WIP limits improve workflow covers how to set them.
3. Techs pull the next ticket. Instead of having work pushed at them, they take the top card when they have room. Pull vs. push explains why that works better.
4. Blocked work stands out. Bottlenecks show as cards piling up in one column.

The board has to show the real work, which for an MSP means the PSA’s own tickets and tasks. General tools like Trello or Asana can be adapted, but they don’t connect to the PSA, so techs end up updating two places. TopLeft puts Kanban boards on top of ConnectWise, Autotask and HaloPSA, and a card moved on the board updates the ticket in the PSA.

What MSPs report

“We were able to move our average project delivery from negative efficiency to positive 58% efficiency. So we finish projects now with an average of 1/3 time left over!” Steve Psaradellis, CEO of TEBA, Australia

“We have improved SLA adherence from 60% to 90% within six months.” Chase Effler, Engineering Manager at Appalachian Network Services

Next steps

• The Kanban Method for MSPs covers the principles, how to set up a pull board, and which numbers to watch.
• How WIP limits improve workflow helps you pick your first limits.
• Daily huddles keep the board current in ten minutes a day.

To see a board with WIP limits running on your own PSA, book a demo.