Blogging on Borrowed Time

Way too much late-night blogging lately. 

Blame it on the NBA, and my family's practice of watching games together.  Blame it on the project I tried to dodge but got sucked into at the eleventh hour.  Blame it on some overlapping extra duty in my extended family.  On ramping up triathlon training.  On the season from hell in Wisconsin politics with no end in sight.  On the devil making me do it.   On. . .

Right now, I should be in bed, unwinding toward sleep in these last minutes of May 26th.  I will need the restorative power of slumber before tackling another crowded day tomorrow.  

But I'm thinking about the pattern that's forming, taking me away earlier and earlier in the day, for more hours, and filling my evenings with multitasking.  And I want it to change.

Or at least I think I do.  Because if I really want it to change, wouldn't I just change it?

Romancing the Clock: In Search of Routine

What is it about routines?  For those of us who are largely self-directed workers, whether at home or in some designated workplace, the absence of routine can be daunting.  Personally, I have fond memories of mornings that began with packing lunches for myself and my kids, breakfasting, showering, dressing, assembling items needed for the day, and leaving the house at a predetermined time to travel to the elementary school where we would all spend the day.  And of days spent teaching college, when bells signaled me to begin and end class, and regularly scheduled meetings and office hours told me where to be and when.  


I am currently floundering in "freedom," not quite sure how to fit the puzzle pieces of my obligations and occupations into the frame of my waking hours.  I am spending too much time deciding what to do, and when to do it.  And in my present transitional emotional state, each decision is an opportunity for reflection and a ruminative, and often fruitless, search for meaning.  I need some structure.


Why, then, is it so difficult to use any one of the dozens of schemes I have learned about for giving form to my daily activities?  As with other resistances that plague me in my quest to get it together, I am partly in flight from myself.  In the past, my attempts to employ routine have been so overdone that I've conjured lists of tasks specified to the point of inanity.  For example, should I need to include a designated time for trimming my nails?  For petting my dog?  Apparently, I have a forest and trees issue.  Cutting to the chase, and staying focused on the big picture are not strengths for me.


Maybe it's all the multitasking I have been influenced to engage in.  Experts such as Dr. David Meyer warn that trying to do more than one thing at a time taxes our brains beyond their two-lobe capacity, decreases efficiency because of time lost in switching between tasks, diminishes focus and can impair short-term memory.  


In any case, I am motivated to try again.  I long for the comfort of some level of prearranged order in my day.  I want to make some decisions once, and not confront them again for awhile.  I crave a bit of predictability.


Here are three resources I have found that I intend to rely on as I construct a workable scaffolding. The first is an article entitled "Time Management Essentials: 13 Routines For Improving Your Life," on Freestyle Mind: Productivity and Life Hacks, which offers a daily, weekly, and monthly set of routines that are basic enough to avoid the nail-trimming, dog-petting trap.  The second is "Organize Your Day With Routines," a little pep talk on BellaOnline:  The Voice of Women, recommending the use of routines for transitional times of the day.  The third is "Daily Routines:  How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days."  It begins, intriguingly, with an interview with Simone de Beauvoir, which includes the question "When do you see Sartre?," and de Beauvoir's response, "Every evening and often at lunchtime. I generally work at his place in the afternoon."  This example should be helpful should I need to squeeze regular contact with a famous existentialist novelist into my overall agenda. 

I'll get back to you on what I manage to distill from these and other thoughts on the subject.  In the meantime, I have decided that for today--this being the last day my gym will be open until Saturday because of Rosh Hashana--I need to go swimming.  Right now.

57 Channels and Nothin' On, to quote the Boss

Multitasking.  Why did anyone think this was a good idea?  As if mere tasking weren't bad enough.  


Yesterday, I found myself minding a talkative, energetic two-year-old high on the first warm sunshine in months, while combing the itsy-bitsy remains of my shattered glass patio table-top from their haven in the dead grass and leaves, and taking an ugly work call on my cell phone.  Later, rushing to meet a deadline receding in the rearview mirror, I accompanied my soon-to-leave-home teen on his dog-walking job while discussing the details of the growing-like-Topsy fundraising project I've been left to manage with our printer.  As I write this blog post, I am interrupted by urgent calls and emails, requiring my fractured attention.  These charming vignettes are becoming our societal paradigm.  


Searching for images of "multi-tasking" and "crazy-busy," I unearth Kali-like women using their many arms to rock babies, hold phones, manipulate computers, cook, hold books, write notes by hand, vacuum--and all in the lotus pose.  One ubiquitous picture in this genre is titled "The Modern Woman." 


Women are supposed to be better than men at this newly named "skill."  Some say because we've had to be.  But why would we want to be?


The Merriam-Webster dictionary included the term for the first time back in 1966.  They define it as 

1 : the concurrent performance of several jobs by a computer

2 : the performance of multiple tasks at one time

It seems likely that computer usage may be responsible for introducing the concept, and in some cases the goal, and some would say the necessity of multitasking.  The growth of multitasking has probably also have been influenced by the growing number of parents, male and female, who are juggling work and family responsibilities.  

Wikipedia tells us that:

Multitasking may refer to any of the following:

• Computer multitasking - the apparent simultaneous performance of two or more tasks by a computer's central processing unit.
• Media multitasking could involve using a computer, mp3, or any other form of media in conjunction with one another.
• Human multitasking - The ability of a person to perform more than one task at the same time.

I would quibble with the language in their last instance, amending "ability" to read "attempt," or even "hubris that leads one to attempt". . .  But that's just me.  Or is it?

At least some "modern women" and men seem to be, like me, falling out of love with the notion.  Governmental units, including my own municipality, want us to give up talking on our cell phones while driving.  (This is something my family learned about the hard way, when my husband tried to answer a call from me while on a bike, and collided with a small child who suddenly ran into his path.  The child was fine.  My husband wasn't.)  Apparently there are many of us who have not gotten the message that the automaticity of the driving task that allows us to give attention to other things can change in an instant to a situation which requires our full attention; the time spent switching attention modes may have disastrous consequences.  And, astoundingly, many of those unconverted individuals are texting while driving.  


At least some writers and brain scientists are questioning the trend toward time-splitting.  Psychologist John Arden warns us "dummies" that "multitasking decreases your memory ability.” He asserts that with each new task we assume,  “you dilute your investment in each task.”  In journals, newspapers, magazines and blogs, articles such as Faith Brynie's "The Madness of Multitasking" caution that this attempt to do it all might "make [us] stupid," slow us down, and drive us mad.  I have not yet read Dave Crenshaw's The Myth of Multitasking:  How "Doing it All" Gets Nothing Done, but I intend to.  And not while spinning, or watching basketball, or half-listening to my spouse.  I think it will need my undivided attention in order to bear fruit in my thinking, and in my life.


Research conducted at the University of Utah and reported on Tuesday  by the New York Times and others apparently reveals an elite class of supertaskers, whose brains seem capable of managing simultaneous tasks efficiently.  If there is such a class, I suspect that many of us who think we might belong to it in fact do not.  And therein may be at least some of the rub.

But for me, the biggest cost of spending more time than I would like in this straddling mode is not efficiency, effectiveness, or even memory.  It is peace.  The most jarring part of the multitasking woman images I have seen is the meditation pose of the multitasker, super or not.  How can anyone "be here now" when "here" is in at least two places?

For today, I vow to spend the afternoon with my grandson ignoring my cell phone, and whatever other tasks nag to be added in that interval.  And if this resolve doesn't make me smarter, or more effective, or help me to retain the experience, I expect that it will leave me less jangled in the end.


Reading over this post as I prepare to run out the door to deal with yet another  emergency of my volunteer job, sandwiched into an overscheduled day, I am unsatisfied with the disjointed quality of what I've written.  Another casualty of multitasking.