Jill Christensen
Jill ChristensenAuthor Blogger
Jill Christensen is a guest blogger for EmpowerPoints, an employee engagement expert, best-selling author, and international keynote speaker. She is a Top 100 Global Employee Engagement Influencer, authored the best-selling book, If Not You, Who?, and works with the best and brightest global leaders to improve productivity and retention, customer satisfaction, and revenue growth by re-engaging employees. Jill’s Website | LinkedIn Profile

The question “What are millennials doing wrong when it comes to their careers?,” originally appeared on Quora – the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.  Here’s a compelling response, which will help you get inside the heads of millennials.  Knowledge is Power. – Jill

“I think the biggest problem we millennials have is that most of us are stuck doing ‘shallow’ work.  Rather than diving deeply into complex projects, we are jumping from micro-project to micro-project throughout the day and never really take the time to grind away at the deeper, more important stuff.

The reason that my generation is stuck in this shallow or distracted way of doing things is because we are constantly communicating with people. When we’re at work, we always have our email inbox open and are constantly getting little notifications that take us away from what we’re doing. On top of that, we might even have our personal smartphones on our desk, and are likely getting distracted by it throughout the day.

The work day is a barrage of constant electronic distractions, and it seems that older people who did not grow up with the same connection to technology, are better at ignoring it.  It also might be that older people just don’t feel as obligated to reply immediately to that latest email or text message as we millennials do.

My observation makes me think that the constant distraction and inability to get deeper into our work is really holding a lot of us back, compared to older adults.  I believe that these distracted daily habits and this constant hit of communications may partially be to blame for the lack of direction that some millennials have.

Our life is a collection of moments.  If we spend our moments distracted and constantly jumping from one thing to the next, then not only our daily tasks but our entire lives are being spent distracted and quasi-focused on trivial matters.  When do we take the time to figure out what we truly want to do with our lives, or what is truly important to us?  That is an incredibly deep and complex task that requires a lot of thinking with no distractions.”

What Can I Do?  My advice to millennials, and employees in all generations, is to focus deeply on the task at hand until it is satisfactorily completed.  Do not rush to the next thing. Instead, focus deeply, work hard at what’s in front of you, and go above and beyond to come up with the best solution possible.  The truth?  There is no such thing as effective multi-tasking.  Focusing on ‘the one thing’ will enable you to solve more complex problems and go farther in the modern work world.