Aptify

I was IM’ing with a colleague the other day and we were lamenting about the overwhelming amount of work we have. Not actually the amount of work, because we both love what we do, but rather an inability to focus on the task at hand when there are so many concurrent needs all seeming to require immediate attention.

This made me begin to wonder why everyone seems to be effective at multitasking but me.

After giving this some thought…

While driving home, wondering about a recent less than positive experience, thinking about dinner, wondering if I should stop and watch a lacrosse practice, thinking I should pick up some Chimay Ale (hint if anyone is thinking about buying me a gift), gawd I hate that song on the radio, let me scan the stations, darn, I’m low on gas and I’m not sure I can make it to the next gas station, oh I need to send the twins a birthday card, not looking forward to helping Joe move this weekend – all of this in about 3 nano seconds. I bet most of you, especially you fellow ADD’ers know exactly what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.

...I decided to see what others really thought versus what they say they do regarding multi-tasking and this pretty much sums up the sentiment of most...

I know of no single thing more conducive to great harm than an unrestrained mind, aka the current penchant for multi-tasking. When the mind tries to do several things at once, it doesn’t do any of them very well. This is an empirical fact proven by numerous experiments, and it is easy to test out for yourself: try texting a message while catching the latest baseball scores on the radio and discussing some recent relationship difficulty with your partner.

– Andrew Olendzki, “Busy Signal” (Winter 2009)

Heck I couldn’t even watch ESPN while pretending to have a deep emotional discussion with my wife – she saw right through me – I can’t even double-task let alone multi-task.