Chullin 87 · Startup voice, On-ramp

Hook

The most dangerous word in a founder’s vocabulary is "interruption." We operate under the delusion that multitasking is a superpower, but we often confuse "parallel processing" with "divided attention." You’ve seen it: a developer pushed to code while simultaneously answering Slack tickets, or a CEO trying to close a VC round while handling a minor HR crisis. We tell ourselves we’re efficient. We tell ourselves we’re just covering two bases at once.

But as the Gemara in Chullin 87 makes clear, there is a fundamental difference between a functional overlap and a broken sequence. The text asks: Can we cover the blood of a slaughtered animal and continue slaughtering another, or does the act of covering constitute a "stop" in the process? The Sages argue that if you can do two things at once—slaughter with one hand and cover with the other—the flow remains intact. But if the nature of the tasks is inherently exclusive, like drinking and reciting a blessing, the moment you transition, you have effectively "closed the book" on the first task. For a founder, this is the ultimate litmus test for your workflow: Are you actually multitasking, or are you just repeatedly starting and stopping your most important work, diluting your focus until the output is worthless?