multi-tasking

Multi-tasking is generating a lot of blog chatter lately; recent studies suggest that trying to accomplish a lot of things at once does not make us more productive, rather, actually seems to make us less efficient. (well.. er.. yeah we knew that, we just like to deny it.) And now, there is evidence from MRI’s to show that the brain isn’t equiped to focus on more than one task at a time. If forced to multi-task, there’s a neural bottleneck, and everything takes just a little bit longer.

And yet, one of the uber-organized gurus I used to spend time with made multi-tasking work for him.

It was amazing to watch, really. He called it “keeping the plates spinning,” referring to the juggler’s act of balancing spinning plates on sticks, shown here:

His trick was to apply just enough energy to each task/ project/ client/ family member/ hobby that each of them would maintain momentum and stay balanced until he could get back and give them another spin. It was really beautiful to watch - especially when I got a birds-eye-view as one of the plates he kept in motion.

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