The Magic Hour Part II: Life Distracted

Your brain on multitasking

Ok, I'm back! I slightly impress myself.

So as promised, I have returned with my findings of how and why I am wasting my time.  my grand realization is that I am trying to dissect my minds capacity in an un-advisable way...or in other words, I'm always distracted. 

There are so many times that I set out to do something with a purpose, say in the evening, and by bedtime I haven't even accomplished the original goal...what have I accomplished? well let's see...I have eaten something, checked facebook, checked my e-mail accounts, watched a couple episodes of my favorite t.v. shows, looked for deals on Amazon, checked facebook again, etc, etc.  It's ridiculous really, doing these things gives you a false sense of accomplishment,  you feel like you are being productive, but in reality you are in the EXACT same position you were before...these things are like a "production twinkie" it's empty calories, doesn't really do any good for you.

So my curiosity took me further, I wanted to see studies that brought up this downside to multitasking.  I found some very interesting results, which I felt were best summarized by this short article: Study finds media multitasking decreases efficiency. (please take the time to read this before continuing.)

Interesting right? especially that last part about how long it took employees to return to their original tasks. Imagine how much of our lives we waste because we are unnecessarily side-tracked.

I will be the first to say that multitasking is necessary and quite useful, Especially when I'm at work, there are times that I must be answering phones, looking up pricing, checking stock, and attending to customers all at once. So don't feel for a minute that I am driving for an abolishing of multitasking. 

But it should be monitored, and confined to the parts of our lives that it belongs.  If we allow our brain to satisfy its desire to always be multitasking, we allow our quality of life to go down. It's like a drug, we feel good when we are multitasking, our brain craves it, but like all drugs, the effects are short lived, and the aftermath is depressing.

Ever heard the term "stop and smell the roses"? yeah, it's kind of like that.  Only now a days, it's not necessarily that we are too busy to stop and smell it, it's that we bend over to smell it with a hamburger in one hand, and our cellphone in the other. So we can indeed say that we accomplish things, but their value is greatly diminished. We take more pride in being able to check it off of our list of things to do than we take joy in being able to admire God's creation. That can't be right.

So I needed to see where my own distraction triggers are, and believe me, they are everywhere.
One such thing is music. I almost always have to have music going, on my computer, ipod, car, head...you get it. But as the article pointed out, that although it can help you get through the mundane, repetitive tasks, music can be very detrimental to learning, very, VERY detrimental, think about it this way, it's like constantly having voices in our head. What is that normally called? being crazy...and are crazy people productive? with the exception of the guy in Beautiful Mind, NO. Easy to understand.





My biggest downfall is that I like to do things with a movie going in the background.  I always used to come home and pop something in while I tried to work on something, meanwhile my brain is

Don't mess

subconsciously furious with me that I would dare to overload its circuits.  I have started watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy again, something I could only justify now that school is over.  I have been amazed at how by putting my computer down, and any other things I'm trying to accomplish, I actually am getting more out of the movies! I never dreamed I would get emotional watching LOTR, but it happened, because with my undivided attention I actually see the masterpiece that it is. (sounds nerdy, I know, but it's the truth!)  So the facts are that when we try to do more, we end up accomplishing less.  When we take things on one at a time, we will be amazed at how much we can accomplish. or as Edison put it: 

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.  

alright followers, now I have defined the problem, established a hypothesis, next step will be to come up with a plan of action. be sure to tune in.

P.S. how many of you read this while listening to music? tsk tsk, shame on you.