Lite Mind Exercise

I draw, I doodle, eat "brain foods" and exercise. In fact I do a lot of the recommended activities on the Lite Mind "120 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power" list. I was feeling pretty confident until I ran across # 79: "do one thing at a time," at which point I felt both guilt and fear course my veins. I knew immediately it was the one I had to do.

I myself am a glutton for multitasking, and for this I totally blame my Mother. In my own sick little mind, I'm not being productive unless I'm breaking myself under the effort of attempting to complete at LEAST 3 or 4 different tasks at the same time.

I'm the person who likes to talk on the phone while cleaning up my room, cooking dinner, doing laundry, and attempting to get ready for some random social occasion. Rarely do I work on anything that involves a computer (a paper, online research, etc,) and not spend my time clicking between at least 4 windows: 1. Pandora, 2. Facebook, 3. Some news source (msn,cnn,etc,) 4. Whatever homework I should actually be focusing my full attention on. In fact, the more I write about this, the more debilitated by the multitasking disease I am beginning to sound...

It was interesting to read that it actually takes about 20 minutes to focus your brain on a task, and that it takes even longer when you're attempting to complete more than one activity at a time. This explained a lot to me about my own productivity....or lack thereof. This is obviously problematic for me, and others who operate in a similar way. The logical part of "me," knows full well that I'm spreading myself far too thin when I embark on 5 projects at once rather than just one. However, it seems as though the challenge of completing more than one task in the same amount of time drives me to repeatedly implement this vicious cycle.

Lite Mind recommended doing the following to eliminate multitasking:

1. Break the work down (into more manageable pieces.)
2. Clear up your schedule (prioritize so you get the truly important things done.)
3. Cut out distractions (like, the other 5 things you're doing..)
4. Finish one task before moving to another (know exactly what "done" entails for each project.)

I did all of these things while creating this blog to see what the outcome would be. This required the following on my part:

1. I retreated to the media lab, where distractions would be minimal and the environment would encourage my focus so long as I was choosing to do so.
2. After several minutes of procrastination, I begrudgingly closed my facebook, myspace, news, and pandora accounts so that I could focus strictly on my blog.
2. I decided I'd be "done" with this particular task only once I had completed a thorough response to the mind exercise on multitasking, and posted it on my blog.
3. I began...

I found that not only was this one of the easiest blogs I've ever written, but that reading on the lite mind website required much less time and attention than my online readings normally do. More often than not, I find myself reading, then re-reading a piece of material several times because I'm so distracted by the orgy of activity I have distracting me on 4 or 5 computer windows. This time however, I read the exercises once, and then immediately began responding by writing this blog.

I have to admit, there is something to this kind of simplification. It's alluring no doubt, the idea of getting twice as much done in the same amount of time. If you're really honest with yourself though, and you do a real inventory of your productivity when you multitask, you may find that just like a lot of others out there all you're really doing is a half- ass job at a bunch of different stuff. I plan on making a REAL attempt to re-frame the way I look at everything I have to get done in a given day from now on. One thing at a time, the best that I can do it. What doesn't get done, well...there will always be something.