Just not all at once.

Here’s a tip for you.

Multi-tasking is a myth.  So, there’s no point in wishing for that third hand.  Your brain can’t manage as much as you are already giving it, let alone more.

The modern world—and, for all I know, the ancient one—has led us to believe that we are faster and more efficient if we try to do more than one thing at a time.  Check your email while you make phone calls.  Write the report while you watch 60 Minutes.  (Trying to be charitable there.  Most of us are watching Dallas—or Honey Boo Boo, I guess.)

It’s all a juggling act, we say.

The truth is even a juggler is only handling one thing at a time:  a ball, a bowling pin, a fire baton.  The juggler is handling each one quickly, to be sure, and switching her attention more rapidly than most of us to the next, but she’s only handling one.  (I know.  I learned how to juggle in college. Don’t get me started on what my dad said when he realized that’s where my tuition dollars were going!)

Think about it.

Your computer multi-tasks.

Or does it?

If you’ve got any of those tools that analyze its performance, you know that it really doesn’t.  Resource allocation is the term.  Your computer is switching resources rapidly between tasks.  It looks like it’s doing more than one at a time, but it really isn’t.

Thus, the extremely annoying paradox of modern life that you have to do less to do more.  You either have to set things up so that you can focus exclusively on your most important task—which is likely to be impractical—or you have to allocate your resources so that you can focus serially on several important things.

There are things you can do to help make that easier—and some of them are sure to come up later in this blog—but they all tend to involve a few tasks in themselves.

Scheduling.  Prioritization.  Organization. Automation.

I’m sorry.

That’s just the way it is.

Stay tuned for more suggestions, but for now. . .just slow down.