Last week I mentioned I had another term to share – Task Saturation. I was clued into this term when I was reading a section of The Dichotomy of Leadership and an example of task saturation was given in the form of a story from a pre deployment training work up. During the story one of the SEALs became overwhelmed by the number of tasks that he needed to keep track of during the exercise.
I found the term most often related to pilots or piloting (one source written by a pilot, the other regarding piloting), which honestly makes sense seeing as you would have a lot to do while flying a plane. I think this quote from Eric Barfield sums up a neat definition, “Task saturation is having too much to do without enough time, tools or resources to do it.” Honestly though, task saturation can affect anyone really as we all so much we are doing on regular basis while getting peppered with distractions, phone calls, emails, various deadlines, et cetera … et cetera … et cetera.
Just because we get overwhelmed does not mean that everything is lost and the world is coming to an end. Organization, check lists, and offloading work will help relieve the stress and help bring order to the mental chaos. This list of steps from the Afterburner consulting or from Jocko himself will help bring sanity to the mental chaos.