Still the Hare…

As a kid, do you ever remember getting challenged to rub your belly at the same time you were patting your head? You’d undoubtedly end up patting your belly and rubbing your head or some very awkward combination of both. How about trying to do homework in front of the television while eating your after school snack? I can certainly remember my homework being much more enjoyable if I was watching “Boy Meets World”, but I also remember it taking twice as long to complete it. As a notoriously huge fan of multitasking, I have been coming to the harsh and disappointing realization that less is definitely more when conducting multiple tasks at the same time.

Multitasking creates an illusion of productivity. The myth of its efficiencies dates way back. Even Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield in one of the letters to his sons advised, “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” I found this quote while reading an article from The New Atlantis aptly titled “The Myth of Multitasking“. Moreover, in an article from Forbes.com, researchers from the University of Sussex in the UK discovered long term effects on the human brain from constant multitasking. The research “…compared the amount of time people spend on multiple devices (such as texting while watching TV) to MRI scans of their brains. They found that high multitaskers had less brain density in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region responsible for empathy as well as cognitive and emotional control,”https://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2014/10/08/multitasking-damages-your-brain-and-career-new-studies-suggest/#73bf2b0a56ee“.

So, if we know it’s inefficient and it’s hurting us, then why do we do it? Why does it feel so good to write this blog post, while answering texts from work, explaining to my husband how to prepare dinner and ironing clothes for the week in between? According to Cal Newport, it’s wrong…but, personally, it makes me feel like a powerful and productive #SuperMom. On the other hand, I make mistakes. I make constant mistakes. The iron was set way too high. I forgot to tell my husband to use the sharp cheddar instead of the mozzarella. I have to go back and read the text thread from my developer because I may have misunderstood his initial question and answered pre-maturely. This blog post is rambling instead of GETTING TO THE POINT [insert awkward smile emoji]. The point I’m trying to make is that I know my quality suffers when I do too many things at once, and I can clearly apply this to numerous facets of my life. I swim in my own self-limiting belief that I don’t have enough time in the day to complete all of my tasks, so I try to squeeze as many tasks as possible into short bursts of time thereby decreasing the quality of my output. Newport’s teachings in his book Deep Work have certainly opened my eyes to the inefficiencies of my current operational state, however, I have not yet determined a strategy for corrective action. In his book, he illustrates a formula for the “law of productivity.” It can be defined as “High Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus). My personal goal is to figure out how I can increase the (Time Spent) portion, and that seems to be quite difficult with 2 small children, a highly demanding job and household to run. However, I know there are others with equally busy lives who are excelling.

This may be the “Mommy” in me, but I can’t help but think of the strategy behind the tortoise’s success in Aesop’s Fable The Hare and the Tortoise. Slow but steady wins the race. The steady portion is the key.

Deliberate. Consistent. Focused.

I’ve made it my personal mission to become a tortoise in a world of frantic, unproductive, distracted hares. At this point, however, I still very much identify with the latter…