Time management (or lack thereof)

I hit a wall this summer.

Between caring for my sons, teaching part-time, bookkeeping, and taking a class, I reached a breakdown point the day I tried to “do it all.” The boys were late for a nap and ‘off the wall,’ racing around the house and climbing on everything; lunch burned on the stove; the laptop’s power cable ‘went’ (in the middle of a blog, ironically enough); the laundry sat in piles in the living room while I tried desperately to keep up with the online discussion my classmates were having (discussing the 140+ pages I’d stayed up late to read).

In a 2005 Time magazine article , the role time-management plays in our increasingly tech-driven world is examined in depth. Bottom line: in actuality, what we consider “multi-tasking” is the brain toggling rapidly between tasks, each assigned a priority level based on the amount of “deep thinking” power required. Less difficult tasks, ones that can be performed on autopilot, are relegated to the bottom while “higher order” thinking takes precedence.

Herein lies the problem: in today’s high-tech, multimedia world, students in particular are called to perform more duties simultaneously… And yet, despite the push, students’ depth of knowledge is diminishing, along with their ability to express themselves well in writing. Finally, there is hard science stating that all tasks suffer when the brain is overburdened.

I, for one, have learned that I need to focus on just a few things (or ideally, one thing) at a time to completion before moving on.

I think my sanity and my kids will thank me for it.


Does your performance suffer when you multitask? How can you compensate? Does recognizing and embracing how you, individually, work best help? How so?