Recently, I seem to be seeing lots of articles on this topic of multi tasking. I reasoned that there is so much press about this topic is because the increasing number of distractions we are confronted with on a every second basis, mostly from our pocket electronic devices.
I used to think that I was a mistress of multitasking but I discovered about 20 years ago that I really wasn’t that good at multitasking. I discovered that in many telephone conversations when I was keyboarding that I would miss chunks of the conversation and would have to ask people to repeat things, particularly when they asked me a question about what they had just told me. I learned that if I would more fully pay attention, the conversation would go quicker, would be more efficient, and I would be able to deal with the whole issue by asking more probing questions to reach a more satisfactory conclusion.
There is information that states that we can multitask but what we are really doing is paying attention to what we are doing serially. When we go back and forth between tasks, we lose focus and momentum. I am sure we have said to ourselves, aloud or to ourselves, after an interruption or switching back to a task, “where was I?” There are suggestions that we really are losing time and our energy gets diverted.
What I have been reading lately tells me that we lose some of our facility for multitasking as we age. I just know that the more I pay attention with minimal distractions particularly television, that the more I can accomplish in a shorter period of time and with greater satisfaction with what I have done.
How successful do you believe you are at multitasking? What would happen if you really focused on one task for a specific time? Would you get more done?
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