The (Multi-)Task At Hand

For years, I have been against the concept of multi-tasking for several reasons. Call me old fashioned that way. Or, if you don’t want to call me old fashioned, call me experienced because I’ve learned from my mistakes on this. Looking for your phone and discovering it hours later in the refrigerator because you were trying to take care of a phone call while you made your kids dinner will teach you to focus on one thing at a time.

When I’m doing one sucky thing, I don’t want to stress myself out more by adding another sucky thing to my agenda. Before you know it, you’re buried alive under suckiness. And if the first sucky thing distracts you from doing the additional sucky thing properly, you may very well find yourself having to redo said sucky item on your agenda again. In the end, the suckiness of your day increases by fifty percent (sucky task + sucky task = 2 sucky tasks; while 2 sucky tasks done simultaneously + redoing one of the sucky tasks = 3 sucky tasks; trust me, where my grammar is lacking, my math makes up for it).

This philosophy also holds true for me when doing something enjoyable. I don’t want to sprinkle anything that sucks onto something I enjoy. It’s like topping your ice cream with powdered fiber.

I even try not to do two things I enjoy at the same time. It seems to take concentration away from each enjoyable thing. Instead of fully enjoying each activity to its fullest, you sort of half enjoy both at the same time. Even while I’m fishing, I will fish for awhile and then decide I want a beer. Fishing will pause, beer will be consumed, and then fishing resumes.

Recently, however, I have decided to try a new approach. My brother-in-law regularly watched movies on his train ride to and from the office. Following his example, when I have an unpleasant task at hand, I have decided to now generate an enjoyable task I hadn’t previously planned on doing to multi-task with it. Instead of adding suckiness, I’m adding something enjoyable which reduces the overall suckiness of what is being done.

For example, I used to try and do something like send e-mails or fold my laundry while I watched a football game. The flow of adrenaline and testosterone was inhibited by matching socks and folding t-shirts. I dragged down a good time by adding something that sucked.

Now, if I need to do something like pay bills, I bring some beer to my desk with me and put on that album I’ve been wanting to listen to. I’m adding good to sucky. Should the enjoyable aspects distract me from the bills, I just get to have more beer while I redo them.

Need to make some phone calls? Who says you can’t do this while playing video games. Just turn the sound down, get yourself a wireless earpiece and enjoy. If you get distracted during the call and embarrass yourself? Have a few quick excuses prepared. Kids and dogs are great for this. Or, pause the game, finish the call and then you have an excuse to just play video games.

I’ll get to it in a minute, honey. I started playing while I was on the phone, so now that I’m off, let me just finish this one level and save.

The only pressure here is to come up with more random fun things you can do to whole doing things that aren’t fun. If you get distracted from an important task, at least it was for something you enjoyed.

What one creates here is not necessarily a win-win, but it’s not a lose-lose either. I’m not exactly sure how it all shakes out, but I do know there’s a win in there somewhere. I'll balance the books on this and get back to you.