I am going to admit that I am not the world’s best multitasker. Recently I was reading an article from the New York Times (online of course, print is practically dead when it comes to newspapers) about how multitasking and technology have taken over our lives in every conceivable aspect: jobs, family, friendships, etc.
I never think of this as working, but as cruel and unusual punishment. Former Justice John Paul Stevens would say this violated the 8th Amendment.
The New York Times article –which is long and incredibly interesting can be found here– is about a man who works in Silicon Valley and how he and his family are constantly connected in some form, whether it would be watching TV and reading email at the same time, playing with an iPad during breakfast, or listening to music, IMing, checking Facebook and getting your work done for your job or school. We’ve all done this in some form or another. I can tell you that I multitasked today before 8 a.m: listening to my iPod while setting an ad for my work while at the same time checking Twitter to see if there were any new updates and then checking to see who emailed me (Secretly I wish it was a Nigerian spam because I’ve never received one).
Now how many of you have done something similar such as texting during class while taking notes, checking Facebook and Twitter during a meeting, or trying to watch a baseball game, checking your fantasy baseball team while trying to write a final term paper (I do this all the time, its awful of me)?
There is good multitasking and bad multitasking and we all do both. Don’t even try to lie or make an excuse; I know how you are because I do both. I am not ashamed to admit my mistakes despite how pig-headed and stubborn I can be. Yeah, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth but so what? Having admitting that I partake in both good and bad multitasking is why I think I am not the best multitasker. None of us are really good at multitasking to if we are quite honest with ourselves.
In order for me to be the most effective multitasker I have to limit my number of task to a maximum of three; two if you really, really need over 90% of my concentration at the two tasks at hand. I don’t even know where the other 10% of my concentration is, probably thinking that a sandwich and a nice delicious glass of Iced Passion Tea would make the task at hand ten times better. Like I said earlier more than three tasks and the final product is not going to be as good as it should be which infuriates me to no end.
In conjunction with the above New York Times article, I read this short snipped from the City Journal on distraction. Alain de Botton makes the claim that our brains need to go on a diet just like we do from time to time to our bodies, but don’t we always say that a diet is a short term solution and that the minute you get off it you balloon back to your original starting point and sometimes worse than what you were at before? Instead of a diet, we need to go on a technology stimuli life change. No matter what, I have added his book to my Amazon wishlist.
When it comes right down to it I find that multitasking to be rather pointless. We think we have a lot done, but in reality we have little progress in a lot of projects. I’d rather have a lot of progress on a few projects than hardly have anything done on multiple projects. Too much multitasking leads to sloppy and inadequate work, which is in a way a distraction and a form of procrastination. Hmm, have you noticed that we are best at multitasking when we are procrastinating? I know I am. When I don’t want to do something I find way of distracting myself so I won’t do i. I am not going to lie that is the reason why I have not written here in a bit about these two articles. I’ve had these three tabs open for the longest time with only a sentence or two written. The concept of “there’s always tomorrow” came very easily to me when trying to write this blog post.
I secretly hate that we can never be truly alone in a sense. We can be so easily reached its not even funny. I have to admit this but sometimes I do agree with Dolores Umbridge when she said in her Hogwarts speech that progress for the sake of progress should be discouraged. But that sounds so bleak and as a silver lining type of person I would say progress for the sake of progress should be discourage if its outside the real for the betterment of the life of humanity.
I can’t believe I have “agreed” with something Dolores Umbridge said. Ugh, it has left a foul taste in my mouth folks.
Dolores Umbridge or as some in the Harry Potter community have called her "Umbitch"
The The Devil’s greatest accomplishment is to convice the world he doesn’t exist and that multitasking makes you more productive. by Hits Snooze Twice, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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