Multi-tasking

Hosting a backyard barbecue with friends while cheering for a sports team on the TV.

Guys are very good at that most of the time, otherwise there would be a lot of burnt hot dogs and burgers.

Sounds like Chai is following Kramer's example.

yummay.

Mame, tell everyone how I drive.

well I do that too, AND think about other stuff as well.

Mame, tell everyone how I drive.

You must have a huge shower

I agree that the role of child caregiver fostered multi-tasking in women.
The traditional roles undoubtably produced particular skills in both men and women.
By the same token, the role of hunter must be considered as a cooperative activity, requiring men to develop skills at teamwork. The team becomes the multi-tasker.

I generally dislike buzzwords such as multi-task, I don't think they give a clear picture and tend to suffer from misuse. Or maybe it's just that they seem to portray a particular skill as better than another.
Multi-taskers are generally best suited at working individually, while teamwork requires the individual coordinate a specific task.

Interesting, Mame, that you should use driving as an example. The night Seaglass and I dropped you off at your b&b in San Francisco and were on our way back to our hotel, we got rear-ended, but good, by a young woman (I want to say 'girl') who was too busy multi-tasking on her cell-phone to notice that the car in front of her (moi) was stopped for a redlight. Creamed my rental car. She didn't even touch her brake, totally unaware that she was about to collide. To me, that's a perfect example of multi-tasking -- having your mind on something other than driving while behind the wheel.

I'm not clear on what multitasking is. Is it keeping a bunch of things going at the same time (but working on each separately). Or is it doing more than one thing at the same time?

If it's the former, I do that. If it's the latter, I don't--usually. Does this mean that I'm not hooked up like a regular female?

It's possible that I could do more than one thing at a time. I don't like to, so I don't.

No good, Chai. That's more like serial - tasking. I'm thinking of my former boss who could do technical phone calls at exactly the same time as working a ten key with no break in stride.

I remember that! I think you were victims of the distracted driving that's going on everywhere.

Chai is a very efficient, smooth driver. She got us downtown, parked, all over the countryside, and back with nary an accident or even blaring horn. I would ride with her again. She could be a taxi driver but she's way too efficient.

Roberta, when I think of 'multi-tasking', it's having a bunch of things on the go at the same time. Not where you stop making the bed because you notice you should vacuum so you get the vacuum out, start vacuuming, then see laundry that needs to be washed so you stop vacuuming and take the clothes to the washer, then you notice the kitty box has to be cleaned, so you stop that, etc etc etc.... (this is my husband). Nothing ever gets finished, and if it does, it's either by accident.

To me, it's doing things simultaneously and men can do it, too - it's just that most of the men I've met do one thing at a time, then they do the next, etc. Women seem to be able to clean the stove while feeding the baby, write up a shopping list, plan a dinner, pet the cat, fill the dishwasher, etc.

My husband is completely adorable but quite disorganized or scattered or whatever it is about that. When we clean the house, he cleans his music room and his living room and I do the rest of the house (another living room, kitchen, two bathrooms, hall, bedroom, laundry room). I notice (quite amusingly) that he will start to clear some papers off his coffee table, sit down to read them (music sheets, bridge mags, etc), then he'll play a guitar for a few minutes, put it down, look at the tv and watch sports for 5 minutes, then shuffle more papers, and so it goes. However, he does get it done and it always looks fantastic... it's just that in a time crunch, I would need to send him to the store so I could do it myself in 20 minutes instead of all day.

I think that maybe almost all with ADD multi-task but not all who multi-task have ADD.

Personally, I am probably of the mentally meandering type you are talking about though. There are very few activities I will dedicate my entire attention to. For example I will rarely watch a movie without also reading or doing something else at the same time, maybe a couple of things (throw in some light coding). Hell a2k is a good example, if I'm on here enough I'll usually start to compose multiple posts at a time and skip between them and whatever else (work, maybe the movie) that I'm doing. That's why sometimes they are so disjointed or repetitive. There are certainly downsides like that to it but the upside is that the output I have is larger that it otherwise would be, though frenetic and sometimes wasteful.

The struggle of my life is to harness the hyperactivity into focus, so I'm not one to preach the concept of multi-tasking as a goal and certainly not to belittle those who aren't that way. It's just the way I am, I have very high sensory input requirements and it can be a boon and a bane depending on the situation. I often have to force myself to single-task, and have built a world of tools around myself to try to help do so (things to brain dump ideas faster into a GTD system so that they don't distract me, using the pomodoro timer technique with software etc).

Like almost anything else in life neither extreme is good and each approach has its upsides and downsides and for most things either approach can work.

I am a very focused and intense kinda person. I hate distractions, extraneous noise, and anything else that might take my attention away from what I'm doing.

I rarely listen to music while I'm doing something. Too distracting.

I am also very productive. But it's consecutive productivity, not simultaneous.

We all march to a different drummer. And if I hear a drummer, I'll get really annoyed.

I think that my dislike of noise and distractions is the origin of my night-owlness. I waited until my parents were asleep before I started my homework. I love the quiet wee hours of the morning.

This pomodoro method....you use it so you find it helpful, obviously. Do you think it'd be useful for an anxious procrastinator? Does the book have much more in it than the basics described on the website...ie four timed 25 minute sessions with a five minute break between, and a longer break after the fourth?

I've never read the book, I can't imagine it's got much more to it than the basic concept. As for whether it would be useful to an anxious procrastinator I can only wonder if the ticking of the timer would help such a person or not (the software I use can turn that on and off though).

The appeal to me is that by setting smaller goals (and I don't necessarily use 25 minutes, sometimes my goal is to concentrate for an even smaller amount of time) of concentration and rewarding myself with scheduled distraction I can more easily focus than to try to do much larger periods of concentration.

I don't use it often (usually once every few weeks when I am particularly frenetic) but basically the shorter and easier goal and the audible ticking are pretty much the key concepts insofar as how it works for me.

Thanks....interesting.

Reading along.
I have an ordinary kitchen timer on my computer desk top (a plain door resting on bookshelves), so I don't forget to check if the slow sauteeing vegetables are coming to some grief in the kitchen. When I use it when it's on the desktop, the ticking drives me nuts - that is, it does when it pervades my consciousness. Eventually a bell will ding, and that always gets through to my brain. I can also seem to tune the ticking out, then hear it and think, what's that? Dumb, I tell ya.
So I have learned to put the timer on the small monitor "desk" (a cheesy old wine storage thing with a board across the top, just the right monitor height) - there the ticking is just about subliminal (or subhearable), I can see the timer, and the bell is no surprise.

Wonder if that would work for this fellow anxious procrastinator. Back when I worked a lot of hours, I didn't have procrastinating luxury or not much of it. But now as a retired person, I'm in procrastination nirvana, and that's plain dangerous. A little self enforced obedience to a time followed by reward might be a good idea.

Besides, I like the name pomodoro.

This fellow anxious procrastinator is I.

I'm thinking of getting a timer!

I do everything properly except paperwork....which is becoming far more crucial than actually seeing humans and all the other things I do. I think one would more easily be forgiven for never actually seeing a client than for seeing millions of them if the paperwork's not up to date.

Paperwork has won.. or the online equivalent of it.

Probably my past re construction specs has affected my future as a paperwork revulsed person.

My favorite kitchen timer was a pear timer from the local food coop - but I managed to kill it, and now just have an ordinary old kitchen timer.

I've been thinking about what you said about your husband's driving habits, Mame. I was thinking about it yesterday whle driving (is that multi-tasking ) The conclusion I come to is that people who drive like that -- don't get into the proper lane until the last moment, miss turn-offs etc. etc. -- are probably multi-tasking as they drive. They're behind the wheel but their mind is on a whole lot of other projects, projects other than operating that vehicle. I tend to be very single-minded when driving. I'm driving the car, the car isn't driving me. I concentrate on wht I'm doing. Never have I used 'cruise controls' on cars that have this, for me, useless piece of equipemtn. If I used cruise-control, I'd feel I don't have to pay much attention; the car's taking care of it by itself. Bull! I'm responsible for taking care of the car.

I'm not sure if thinking while doing something is what I'd call multi-tasking. I think when he drives like that (not all the time), he's either talking or just not concentrating on driving. To me multi-tasking is doing many things at once. Or several. When he's actually driving driving, he's good. When we're discussing something, he loses concentration. Good thing we're not allowed to talk on the phone while driving anymore Well, hands-free we can, but he doesn't have the equipment.

http://articles.boston.com/2011-12-13/community/30512718_1_mothers-fathers-moms