Mr. Mike DeSimone: Two Keys to Increase Your Productivity
Author: Mary Wissinger | Living Education
These posts summarize the forums that our Living Education-Charlotte students attend each week.
As the fall semester of Living Education-Charlotte 2026-27 began, the LivingEd students had the opportunity to hear from Mr. Mike DeSimone, manager of broadcast and media, for their first forum. He discussed productivity, addressing two major components that have a much larger impact than we may realize. First, he elaborated on multitasking.
“The Multitasking Myth”
Mr. DeSimone opened by referencing a book entitled The Myth of Multitasking, by Dave Crenshaw. From it, he read a passage in which a man came in to consult the CEO of a company that was having difficulty progressing. The man asked the CEO, Helen, if she could think of a time when she had multitasked. “Sure,” she responded. “I’ll be answering an email, and someone will come in and ask me a quick question.” She continued, “I keep working on the email and tell them to go ahead and ask the question. I’ll respond to the question and then go back to work.” The man, Phil, nodded and replied, “So you didn’t really multitask, did you?” (Crenshaw 18) Instead, she had been switchtasking, flipping back and forth between tasks so fast she didn’t recognize it.
At the end of the day, that is what all of us fall into doing at some point–switchtasking, falsely labeled “multitasking.” Though the initial concept may seem like a great way to accomplish many projects at once, it proves to be far less efficient, and far less effective, than giving time to just one specific thing.
“A Quarter of the Time”
To demonstrate his point, Mr. DeSimone had the students complete the same activity, composed of two smaller tasks, twice. The first time, students switched between tasks; the second time, they finished one task before starting the other.
On average, when students switched tasks, it took them 54 seconds to finish the activity, compared with 24 seconds to complete both tasks separately. Mr. DeSimone pointed out, then, that without switch-tasking, it would take 12 seconds to do just one of those tasks, or essentially a quarter of the time. The same outcomes have been proven to be true with any other project or activity you can think of.
“Organization: The 5 Ss”
The second major component of productivity Mr. DeSimone highlighted was organization. When a system is put in place, he proved, tasks can be completed much more efficiently. He described one system in particular, called “The 5 Ss of Lean”, that is often used in work offices:
Sort – Filter out the junk
Set in Order – Arrange remaining material for ease of use
Shine – Clean up
Standardize – Create methods to maintain the previous 3 Ss
Sustain – Ensure consistent application of the S’s across all spaces
After an activity in which they had to strike out the numbers 1-49 in order from a jumbled mess, students found this system to be twelve times more effective than not using it at all. Even more than speed, though, the 5 Ss have been found to increase accuracy and the ease of finding misplaced/missing documents, files, etc. significantly.
“Systems and Switchtasking”
Indeed, organizational systems are implemented in the workplace for a reason. While some claim they are better off finding what they need among disheveled piles of paper stacked high, it has been proven that even a lean method creates a cleaner, more efficient space. Focusing on one task at a time can nearly double both accuracy and speed.
Let’s consider the two keys Mr. DeSimone gave in his forum and utilize them in our daily activities. If we do that, we can be sure to see an increase in our productivity going forward.
