Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
In Which Owl Defends Unitasking
I've noticed lately that many bloggers are writing about the renewed respect that "unitasking" is receiving.
Multitasking is, and always has been, for the birds. Our minds are compartmentalized enough without externally forcing our synapses into multiple buckets. J always lurks in the back of my work-mind; when I read her Counting Penguins, am I mentally composing an email to the IT director? Yep.
So the last thing I need is to physically give myself permission to do multiple things at once. Yet this is what we are often called to do.
Some of this, especially in parenting mode, is absolutely necessary. Monitor your child's safety while shopping...part and parcel of the same activity. Cook dinner while catching up with your spouse's workday...just common consideration for your partner, and not mentally taxing.
But the demand that most workplaces place on employees with regard to physically completing multiple tasks at once means that we sacrifice depth for breadth, quality for completeness. Instead of delving into a project -- losing ourselves in it and coming out the other side a little breathless and inspired -- we skim over the top of it and move on, all the while juggling yet another need.
My favorite metaphor lately for the challenges I have at work is that of a waterbug, skimming the water but never breaking the surface. It's happened to me (correction: I've allowed it to happen) for so long that it's now a way of working. In a sense, I am fearful of the diving-in. I fret about what other projects will suffer if I put my attention to a single task. And so I continue to touch all the project threads, run them through my fingers, grasp them for a moment, toss an admiring glance their way, and move on, with the situation largely unchanged.
I manage in this way to frustrate myself and disappoint those around me. (Awesome!) If I would only grow a pair and insist for once that I be allowed to focus on the task at hand before moving on, I'd at least have some assignments that left the recipient and me both satisfied.
As parents, we spend hours and days struggling to live in the moment, to focus entirely on our children (as they do the opposite, straining toward the capacity to understand everything at once). When we do manage it, when we center our intention entirely on one thing, the moments slip away unnoticed and we sometimes look up to see that hours have passed as we played with our infant. It's magic.
Why should that be confined to the home? I didn't sign up for a non-magic job. The simple fact that worker bees everywhere are starting to notice that multitasking is BS means that I may not be the only one who sets up a take-a-number mechanism at her desk and calmly returns to linear thinking.
Multitasking is, and always has been, for the birds. Our minds are compartmentalized enough without externally forcing our synapses into multiple buckets. J always lurks in the back of my work-mind; when I read her Counting Penguins, am I mentally composing an email to the IT director? Yep.
So the last thing I need is to physically give myself permission to do multiple things at once. Yet this is what we are often called to do.
Some of this, especially in parenting mode, is absolutely necessary. Monitor your child's safety while shopping...part and parcel of the same activity. Cook dinner while catching up with your spouse's workday...just common consideration for your partner, and not mentally taxing.
But the demand that most workplaces place on employees with regard to physically completing multiple tasks at once means that we sacrifice depth for breadth, quality for completeness. Instead of delving into a project -- losing ourselves in it and coming out the other side a little breathless and inspired -- we skim over the top of it and move on, all the while juggling yet another need.
My favorite metaphor lately for the challenges I have at work is that of a waterbug, skimming the water but never breaking the surface. It's happened to me (correction: I've allowed it to happen) for so long that it's now a way of working. In a sense, I am fearful of the diving-in. I fret about what other projects will suffer if I put my attention to a single task. And so I continue to touch all the project threads, run them through my fingers, grasp them for a moment, toss an admiring glance their way, and move on, with the situation largely unchanged.
I manage in this way to frustrate myself and disappoint those around me. (Awesome!) If I would only grow a pair and insist for once that I be allowed to focus on the task at hand before moving on, I'd at least have some assignments that left the recipient and me both satisfied.
As parents, we spend hours and days struggling to live in the moment, to focus entirely on our children (as they do the opposite, straining toward the capacity to understand everything at once). When we do manage it, when we center our intention entirely on one thing, the moments slip away unnoticed and we sometimes look up to see that hours have passed as we played with our infant. It's magic.
Why should that be confined to the home? I didn't sign up for a non-magic job. The simple fact that worker bees everywhere are starting to notice that multitasking is BS means that I may not be the only one who sets up a take-a-number mechanism at her desk and calmly returns to linear thinking.
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