Bob, an old boss of mine, could juggle five things at a time for hours on end. That included conducting a meeting, using the phone, planning a project, reading his mail, and chewing me out. I was really impressed and decided to use his techniques to increase my productivity. The following saga details the resulting fiasco.
Task #1: I tried to write 5,000 words of outstanding prose at least six days per week. That task sounded quite simple. I even thought I could slip in a few other activities without missing a beat. Wishful thinking. I moved on to task #2.
Task #2: While writing, I tried to scan the paper for stories that might give me something worth writing about. After trying to read and type at the same time, I developed a migraine and quickly backed off. My boss might do five things at once. For the present, it seemed, that I'd picked the wrong two.
Task #3: Being an avid sports fan, I wanted to shave while listening to the Colorado Rockies baseball team as they took on the Bay Area Giants. Colorado's best slugger hit a home run at an inopportune moment and I lost half of my ear. Right there and then, any multitasking that involved shaving was removed from my list.
Task #4: Still interested in sports, I tried to write a chapter of my version of the "Great American Novel" while listening to the National Football League playoffs. That was a flop. During the three hours the game was on, I wrote 45 words. On reviewing my prose after the game, those 45 words made as much sense as you'd expect from a chicken pecking away at my computer keyboard. I decided to cut my objectives a little bit more.
Task #5: My wife likes togetherness time so I tried to slip that in with my writing. Soon, she was telling me about all the rumors she heard at the church sewing circle. Tuning out most of the gossip came naturally to me. The tough part was convincing my wife that I had been listening intently. To complicate things, she asked enough questions at the end of her spiel that I decided to cut back on my number of concurrent projects one more notch. Marital problems can be hard to resolve.
Task #6: My final effort involved making sense out of all my resolutions. Upon completing that task, I finally realized that my mind wasn't built for multitasking. However the project did convince me that my normal work required enough rewrites to fill my 300-gig computer with undecipherable gibberish.
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