16h18-18h15, 15-March-2013
A thousand words on multi-tasking…OK, go!
I don’t remember when the first time was that I heard the term “multi-tasking”, but I can say that for me it required not a lick of explanation. And yet…what is multi-tasking? What? Doing more than one thing at a time? Big whip! Of course, time is relative (No shit, Sherlock…er, Einstein), and whether it is even possible to do more than one thing at at time really depends on how “time” is defined in context. For instance, at this exact moment I am typing, but less than a minute ago I was checking both Facebook and my Twitter feed and my email, and before that I was looking in on my torrent downloads (kinda hot to test-drive some disk utility software today after having read Joe Kissell’s Macworld article Do you need a third-party disk utility?), all immediately following a round of click-click-clicking to establish my place on the free wifi network at my Black Market Café perch. Is this multi-tasking? The answer is both “Yes!” (if “time” is defined in increments of 5 minutes) and “No.” (regardless of one’s level of keyboard prowess, even at the proverbial speed of light it is simply impossible to simultaneously perform any of the tasks I just described).
OK, science geek. Get over yourself, bag the theoretical and pedantic, and move on.
Juggling is often used to as a metaphor for multi-tasking. However, still I consider myself to be the one of the original multi-taskers, despite my absolute inability to keep more than one ball in the air at a time. And although I cannot play the piano with more than one finger (and slowly with that finger, at that), I can play a keyboard like nobody’s business, all ten fingers working in tandem to accomplish individual tasks towards a common goal. So can touch-typing be considered a form of multi-tasking? No, that’s just silly. Are you really so desperate to get down a thousand words on multi-tasking, Kory? Come on.
One of the sharpest insults heard during my teenage years was the labeling of a person as someone who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. The line is decades-stale today and is seldom used, but that doesn’t mean I don’t continue to hear it in my unspoken thoughts…except these days I tends to ascribe it to uncooperative computer operating systems…Hello, OSX! Yes, Windows, I’m talkin’ ’bout you!
It used to exasperate my Mom when in high school I would do my homework while watching Late Night with David Letterman and talking to friends on the phone. And as glad as she no doubt was that my grades didn’t suffer, I think it irritated her greatly that said formula worked so well for me. Poor Mom. What was she going to say? “Just imagine how much better your A in English would be if you concentrated harder on your work!” Later, when I struggled during the first semester of my Freshman year at Yeshiva University, Mom saw her moment. Harping at me (lovingly, of course) that college was so much more difficult than high school and that it was time to bear down and concentrate on my studies, she was quite gratified when my grades rebounded in second semester. It has been nearly thirty years since then, but I am reasonably certain I gritted my teeth in a smile and swallowed the response I no doubt ached to offer, that being that my letters were back up due to my having recovered (somewhat) from the first semester breakup with my first love (we’ve all got ’em) and had as a result returned to watching David Letterman while studying (and whatever rerun whatnot WNBC ran after that).
One man’s concentration is another man’s desolated desert of distraction. Oh, somebody please poison me slowly for not editing that sentence out!
Hopped away for a moment to check Facebook and Twitter, track my Raspberry Pi order (how cool it would’ve been if the darn thing — which I ordered back on 12-February — had shown up yesterday!), send a couple of iMessages to My Missus, grab a glass of water (writing is thirsty work!), gab with Yusef about his terrific decision to fire up some sweet Chet Baker, and to wag a finger at The Boy for doing face stuff (imagine things 11-year-olds do unconsciously that involve fingers, fingernails, noses, mouths and you’ll have enough information to go on). A multi-tasking fiend, am I.
I want to write here that following university my work habits matured and that I no longer required distractions to achieve my best work, but that would be akin to saying that I no longer enjoy comic books or dig good sci-fi or organize my music collection. No, not only do I still need to have a glorious mess of various-and-sundry going on that has nothing to do with work to have any hope of doing my work and doing it well (e.g., a documentary running on the screen to my left, social media humming away, some kinda music running underneath, an article open on Pocket, 25+ Chrome tabs open…), but I remain a world-class procrastinator. Rough estimate? To get in my 8-10 daily work hours I only need 12-14 hours in front of AppleKory, with sleep paying the multi-tasking freight.
Just resolved to drop “multi-tasking” from my vocabulary and to replace it with “multi-tracking”. This new term — during this introductory period please feel free to use it at no cost — benefits from the shedding of the connotation of simultaneousness that the now-replaced term shouldered for so long (and badly), and it also sounds way cool. Bit of a feeling of movement and kinda music-y at the same time. Got a “one-track mind”? No multi-tracking for you! Got an eight-track mind? Wake up and smell the digital.