I Can't Concentr...Look! A Blue Jay!

Multitasking. Dictionary.com defines multitasking as "the concurrent or interleaved execution of two or more jobs by a single CPU." Given the business world's requirement that employees be able to multitask, it would seem, we are all computers, or at least expected to work like a computer.

It struck me today as I was trying to focus on reading an article from start to finish, that I really hate the effect the requirement to be able to multitask at work has had on both my professional and personal life. I could not concentrate  long enough to finish the article, and it wasn't even a long article! I got about four paragraphs in and my brain immediately started jumping around to the next task and the one after that. It was a good article, and I would have liked to have been able to read it through slowly and savor its meaning, but nooo, my monkey brain had to take off for the races and send me scurrying off to the next two tasks on my list. I did eventually finish the article, but it just wasn't the same.

Now I understand that there are times in life when you have to handle more than one thing at a time, I really do, but having to do it so much professionally has left me occasionally scatterbrained in my personal life. I make lists of things I need to do that I have every intention of completing, only to find myself jumping from one thing to the next without having completed anything  by the end of the day because I'm trying to figure out which item is the highest priority, even though I had already determined that when I made the list in the first place. Am I the Lone Ranger here?

I remember a beautiful time when I could focus on one thing and one thing only, and complete it to perfection. I was supremely detail-oriented. No error ever got by me. I was sharp as a tack and quick on my feet. Now my eye for detail has been somewhat compromised by having to divide my attention between several tasks and I'm exhausted from trying to keep up with my regular workload, plus retain all of the new data being thrown at me from various sources at work. 

My workplace loves to have training meetings, which is fine, except that what we're being trained for doesn't actually get implemented until some distant point in the future when we've long since forgotten the training. Then, when we ask questions later when we have to actually use the training, we get yelled at because we had the training x-number of months ago and we should know the answer. Look it up, they say. Grr!!!

Now, where was I going with all of this? I totally forget. As I've been writing this post, I've been distracted by my dog, a burning candle that I should probably extinguish now, a television show, and my body telling me I need to sleep. I think I was going to take a stand and begin to do only one thing at a time from now on...unless I forget.