There are many things I am, and especially one thing I am not. I used to think I was, I acted as if I was, and I even told prospective employers that I was. It’s not that I was lying because I really believed I was. Most people think they are, too. However, research finds that only 2.5% of us are…multi-taskers! That’s right, only a small number of people can do more than one thing simultaneously with efficiency.
Surprised? I was. How could I have been so wrong about myself for most of my life? Perhaps it’s because most jobs I’ve ever had required me to do more than one task at once. Take for instance, my first job at a McDonald’s restaurant. Three of my good friends were already cashiers at our local Mickey D’s so I was excited to join the team. In addition to taking food orders and ringing them up, my boss, Glen offered me a hostess position. He said it’d be easy. A few times a month, I’d be in charge of birthday parties and whenever there was a new company promotion, I’d tell customers about it. Sounded fun! How hard could it be?
If you’re a parent and have ever thrown a kid’s birthday party, invited 10-12 kids over, served food and refreshments, provided entertainment including, but not limited to, engaging each child and their parents in a game, then you know what I’m talking about. Every two-hour party felt like…an eight-hour shift!
And the other part of my hostess job? Not so simple either. The first event I was involved in was the 1979 “Breakfast with a Flair” campaign. Just as the slogan implied, if anyone ordered a breakfast meal, they’d receive a blue Flair pen. Wow! Neato! All I had to do was stroll around the restaurant, enthusiastically talk up this deal, entice customers with Flairs in hand, all the while wearing a cumbersome pen costume! Most times, I still had to put in a few hours of cashiering after my promotional work was done. No rest for the weary!
Since I thought I was good at it, I applied this multi-tasking skill to other life situations. As a young student, I would listen to my teacher reading aloud, follow along in a textbook, answer a note Michelle passed to me, hand it off to Susan, while glancing at the clock and counting down the minutes until recess. As an adult, I would attend family holiday dinners and do the same. I would listen as an uncle shared a story that I had heard at least 20 times, recite each word in my head as he said the words out loud, nod at an aunt wondering who she was rolling her eyes at and why, laugh at a joke my cousin across the table told, while tasting the mashed potatoes on my plate and thinking whoever made them this year was a little heavy handed with the salt.
From my journal: August 17, 2016, Newbury Park, California
“Nice…sat down today to read…not for school, work, or book club…just to read…so relaxing.”
The ability to multi-task or task-switch is usually praised in business, as well as in our personal lives. Afterall, if you are like the small percent of those who can efficiently do more than one task at a time, your productivity and amount of work completed increases. However, if you are in the 97.5% camp, multi-tasking makes you more distracted and likely to make errors. And it’s not particularly good for your brain either. In our brains, the prefrontal cortex is activated anytime we need to pay attention. This part keeps us focused on a single task by synchronizing messages with other systems. When working on a single chore both sides of the prefrontal cortex are in happy harmony. However, add another task and the left and right sides then work on their own, making each task harder to do.
However, multi-tasking while doing simple everyday things such as walking and talking at the same is not so difficult to do. But when the tasks are more complicated like driving a car and texting, which isn’t smart anyway, neither one is done well and can be detrimental.
In my last few years of teaching, I became acutely aware of how my colleagues and I constantly multi-tasked. It was common to see us in the teachers’ lounge at lunch with a stack of tests to grade in one hand and a sandwich in the other. All the while, we’d be talking about teaching our next units, upcoming school events, and how to handle student issues. No wonder I went home exhausted all the time! But once I began doing one thing at a time, I felt less frazzled. Instead of bringing my planning book to recess, I’d just take a breather. If I had questions about a lesson, or needed feedback on a student, I’d schedule time with my team. When I had papers to correct, I set aside time to do just that, and only that. In the long run, focusing on one thing at a time kept me from having to go back and forth between tasks, constantly trying to remember where I left off. It saved me from having the same conversations over and over. And it freed up space in my head so I could be more creative. In short, it helped me keep my sanity.
Older and wiser, these days my time is my own. I enjoy reading when I am reading, cooking when I am cooking, and writing when I am writing. I no longer have to, or want to, do more than one thing at once. I’m proud to proclaim that I am indeed a single tasker! Now, I take life one day at a time, and one task at a time. How wonderfully…relaxing.
A Journal Journey 