The Madness of Multitasking

Hi!

I read an opinion piece in BusinessWeek titled “The Madness of Multitasking.” It’s a preview of a book titled Elsewhere, U.S.A. and it describes me perfectly. It was a bit of a shock, and an eye-opener. The premise is that our personal and professional lives have become so intertwined that we think of just hanging around with the kids as “wasting time.” For me, it goes a bit deeper. I’m practically obsessed with getting things done. I have pretty much EVERYTHING on my Outlook task list. When I get up in the morning, I’m faced with more things to do than I can possibly finish. The result is that I pick the low-hanging fruit (so to speak) and avoid the stuff that really matters. The goal seems to be checking off tasks, not actually accomplishing anything important. Here’s what I’m going to do:

1) I’m separating my work and home email. For a long time, I had my Cox email forwarded to my Intel account. This meant that I was constantly seeing personal email at work. Because of my obsession with keeping my Inbox empty (I rarely have more email in my Inbox than will fit on a screen.), I’m constantly checking and replying to email at work that has nothing to do with work. It made it impossible to focus on something for more than five minutes. My plan is to setup a rule at work that forwards anything that comes from an address NOT ending in @intel.com to home. This may be too simplistic, but it’ll be a start.

2) I’m separating personal (including school) and work tasks. This will get me to focus more on work while I’m at work, instead of being distracted by that personal task that’s generally easier (and more fun) to do… Having just reconfigured our desktop computer, I’m working on Brandi to use Outlook’s task features. My plan is not to draw her into my madness, but to help us work together on domestic tasks. For example, if “Put away laundry” is a shared task, then whichever one of us completes it will check it off and the other won’t see it. It’ll also help us see what the other has planned to do…

3) I may get rid of my BlackBerry. Here’s why I think that might help: I feel like the constant connectedness with work that it gives me provides me with an excuse to lose focus on work-related stuff: If someone really needs me, then they need only send email, right? Without it, I’ll have to leave work at work and be more focused while I’m there. I may just trade it in for a cheap cell phone so I can still have my desk phone forwarded.

The first two are pretty much a done deal. Whether I actually do get rid of my BB will depend a lot on how much my bill drops after recently changing plans...stay tuned!

Take care!
Matt