Entrepreneur Attribute - Multitasking

From my favourite section on Raj Jain's blog - Entrepreneurship, he talks of multitasking being an integral characteristic of an entrepreneur:

"One way to go through a day is to focus on one thing at a time, complete it and then move on to the next. An entrepreneur needs exactly the opposite attitude. This is because challenges do not come sequentially. The next problem does not wait for the previous one to complete – an entrepreneur’s life is not a PowerPoint presentation.

Multitasking is at the heart of an entrepreneur’s day and life. The phone rings and needs to be answered, an urgent email needs a reply, a team member needs a map of the way forward, a customer is unhappy, a sales call needs to be made – all pretty much at the same time. In this scenario, one can throw one’s hands up – or smile, and jump right into it. In doing so, an entrepreneur needs the ability to switch from one context to another rapidly.

Such is the activity sequence of an entrepreneur. Many may deride the entrepreneur’s lack of focus or inability to delegate effectively. The reality is that the entrepreneur has no choice. This is not necessarily because the entrepreneur is a poor operational manager and therefore a critical resource and perhaps a bottleneck. It is because the entrepreneur has the compass and the landscape – in the mind’s eye. It is not easy to translate this to everyone, and so the others need a guide, a torchbearer who leads the way. In doing so, the entrepreneur thus ends up having to manage multiple activities, especially at the early stage of a venture."

In the last para, he mentions:

"One either likes context switching or not. It is not easy to do. But when at the end of the day, the entrepreneur sits back and thinks for a moment about the day, there will be a sense of satisfaction, even a little smile – irrespective of how the day went. And then, as the eyes close for a night of sleep, the entrepreneur is already looking forward to the list of tasks that already await the light of the next morning. "

- entreprenuer or workaholic ? Maybe there is only a thin line that differentiates the two. Maybe a little bit of workaholic-ism isn't all that bad - as long as you drink it in in moderation.