I’m a monkey with many hands… (and the one with too many bracketed asides!)
Everyone talks about multitasking; everyone talks about how women are so much better at it; some people claim they’re brilliant at it but is it a real thing? Honestly, no. Multitasking is a myth.
Science will tell you that there is no such thing as multitasking – anyone who claims they can focus on more than one thing at once and get them completed is wrong, they are in fact more stressed and less
productive.
However, the key word in that sentence was FOCUS. You see, you cannot focus on two things at once and do both/all of them well but you can do more than one thing at once and manage to do them both – and actually,
there’s more than one way to do that…
The first way is to start with a task that uses very littleof your brain and focus – ironing is a great example (watching TV is not as you actually need to concentrate unless it’sGrease and you’ve seen it 100 times before). So, you’ve got that on the go and you’re in the groove and you’re almost working on autopilot (a bit like when you drive home in a daze but can’t quite remember how you got there) so now you can pick up a second task – obviously if you’re ironing it can’t be something that uses your hands but perhaps you could dictate a blog (no, I’m not ironing whilst I write this, I’m not even sure I own an iron or where it is). You get
the idea though, one thing that actually takes focus and one that needs very little… that is the idea of multitasking but in all honesty the list of things you can complete like this is quite short, there are so few things in life that need little or no focus at all.
The second way- and this is the one I do all the time- and the reason why everyone thinks I’m so good at multitasking is by gap filling whilst working so I use all ‘downtime’ in the most effective way. Let me set up a typical scene for me – I need to do some scanning and I’m foolish enough to have bought a scanner that only takes single pages at a time I’ll set up the first page, press scan and whilst it’s doing that whirry light thing I’ll open something else and crack on with another task… I break off to turn the page and carry on in that vein. And that is the true secret of multitasking for me – it’s actually the effective use of white space (trying to think of a pithy term for that but can’t) and it’s something that I’ve practiced over years as I hate sitting still waiting for things to happen – I’ll do work whilst on hold on the phone to HMRC; send emails whilst waiting for the bus; watch new Netflix episodes whilst doing the washing up… you get the idea.
So, let’s not pretend we’re multitasking, just keep getting everything done and if someone else wants to erroneously praise you for your multitasking skills – let them!