I remember the multitasking test came up earlier in the semester, and the link to the test was shared then. I was intrigued, so I tried it out. And proceeded to "fail" miserably within about the first few minutes. I wasn't surprised, not really, but it did annoy me a little. I thought I could do multiple things at a time while still staying on task. I'm a mom for crying out loud! I'm unstoppable when it comes to doing multiple things at once. But I was kidding myself--it's not who I am. I'm too much of a detail person. I need to make sure I'm doing a task well and thoroughly, and I'm pretty sure that mindset takes me straight out of the running for Multitasker Extraordinaire. Let's frame it like this: what percentage of that two percent of multitaskers are perfectionists, too?
Regarding "7 Things You Need to Stop Doing to be More Productive," perhaps this ought to be mandatory prep material for, say, middle schoolers, so that by the time they get to high school, and ultimately college, they'd be more productive in general. Think about it: we're taught from about high school on that we should drill and drill and cram and pack in as much studying and writing and reading and theorizing as we can, so that we can Learn It All. What I took away from this reading is that maybe that's not the smartest approach. (And good grief, the sleeping/napping stats...if only I could find away to get those hours in, to actually take naps. How much better would I be at life, at grad school, at work, parenting, life-ing, ETC.?) I liked all the tips in the article, but the one I'm most interested in incorporating into my life is saying "I don't" vs. "I can't." Powerful stuff. The body double (No. 3) theory also hit super close to home. That is, having someone with you when facing a dull or difficult task helps you to get things done (provided you're a distractable person...like me).
I loved the article about faking cultural literacy so much that I read it twice. It's so incredibly spot on. With all the information and news and shows and movies and celebs and politics, and all of it woven together by social media and hipsters and our friends...how can we NOT fake it sometimes? I do have conversations where I find myself running to the internet after to catch up on something I either thought I knew or that I actually knew nothing about at all and pretended my way through, all in an effort to not look like some bumbling, ill-informed dumbo. In reality, maybe my comrades were faking, too.
The "Death by Information Overload" article said: "...people took an average of nearly 25 minutes to return to a work task after an email interruption." Reading that made me want to cry from: relief, commiseration/shared trauma, empathy, ALL of it, because it's so real and so true! According to the author, people use interruptions as opportunities to do other things, like texting or surfing the internet. Yep, this was a key point for me. Too many emails are only part of the problem. They're an invitation to distract yourself, right? To take away from the work/task at hand. It legitimizes the intent to (want to) mess around. "Oh, was just checking my email, but while I'm here..."
I found the author's mention of email sorting software interesting. I'm skeptical, though. It's not human, it's not me. How can it possibly prioritize my workload via algorithms? Has anyone tried this and it actually been effective?
Overall, lots of great stats/facts in this article, but what I liked, too, was the author's point that for all the fretting we're doing over being overloaded, this isn't really a new problem. It's been around at just about every intersection where something new is introduced, from movable type, to the copier, to the internet. Humanity will continue to whine that we're being inundated...
Here's the thing, though. I don't feel overwhelmed by media. I feel overwhelmed by all the things I'm not doing while I'm using media. Like interacting with my husband and kids and family. I'm so distracted by the sparkly information on the shiny internet that I've forgotten how to focus on the humanity. It's really quite tragic.
Something I can't not share. I don't know if it was the subject matter in this week's readings, or if I simply have a lot going on in this moment in time, but I was ridiculously distracted (by/with my homework). I thought it was a crazy twist of fate that I repeatedly found myself "chasing squirrels" (have you seen the movie Up? It's me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSUXXzN26zg) both while I was reading and while I was typing my thoughts here. There were at least a dozen separate times where I took 10/15/20/5 minute breaks to do 100 other things and then had the hardest time coming back to the task of my classwork. Weird, right? :)
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