How many things do you have going on right now?\u00a0\u00a0How many things do you typically have going on at any given time?\u00a0\u00a0During a typical workday, how many programs are open on your computer desktop? Is dinner cooking, laundry in both the washer and dryer, and a conversation occurring on the phone or with your kids? It may surprise you to find that you\u2019re not doing all that at once.\u00a0\u00a0And don\u2019t take offense, but you\u2019re not physiologically capable of doing it all at once.<\/p>\n
Neither is your computer. You may have several programs open at once, but the processor in the guts of the machine is still handling instructions in the order it receives them. Even with the dual-core and quad-core processors built into the current\u00a0\u00a0generation of computers, there are limitations as to how many and what type of activities can be conducted simultaneously.\u00a0\u00a0If you\u2019re curious about the nuts and bolts, this website has an explanation that comes pretty close to plain English:\u00a0http:\/\/www.wisegeek.com\/what-is-a-dual-core-processor.htm<\/span> That which we call “multitasking” is a lot like the physical act of juggling.\u00a0\u00a0Juggling has a lot less to do with how many objects you have in the air than it has to do with what happens to each object as it lands in your hand.\u00a0\u00a0Juggling isn\u2019t so much about great catches as it is about great tosses.\u00a0\u00a0You must toss each object into a place in the air where it will predictably end up in nearly the same spot. Your hand must, of course, also end up in nearly the same spot, but that\u2019s much easier to accomplish than the toss.\u00a0\u00a0 I have not been able to accomplish a series of good tosses. I am physically inept at juggling.\u00a0\u00a0With practice, and a great deal more patience than I normally exercise, I may be able to juggle three objects one day. “Multitasking” has started making more sense to me since I found the parallel to juggling.\u00a0\u00a0The tasks I face at any given time cannot all be accomplished at once.\u00a0\u00a0I have to select the most important objects and weigh them, then decide what to do with them. Each must end up in the air for a time.\u00a0\u00a0And each will land, and hopefully each lands in my hand.\u00a0\u00a0As it lands in my hand, I decide what to do with it: does it go back up into the air, or can it take it out of the mix, or do I need to hand it to someone else? You don\u2019t need to freak out if you cannot multitask all the priorities in your day.\u00a0\u00a0Handle each appropriately, or decide to set it aside. Toss into the air carefully. I promise you, no matter how good you think you are at “multitasking,” you\u2019re nowhere near as good as your computer, and even your computer does it all one item at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How many things do you have going on right now?\u00a0\u00a0How many things do you typically have going on at any given time?\u00a0\u00a0During a typical workday, how many programs are open on your computer desktop? Is dinner cooking, laundry in both the washer and dryer, and a conversation occurring on the phone or with your kids?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9],"tags":[1085,279,311,50,417,1197,1218,454,1229,1243,488,497,625,1353,1362,683,701,1415,203,1469,830,835,848,1481,1606,1621],"class_list":["post-1377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary-and-consideration","category-basics","tag-action","tag-activity","tag-attention","tag-computer","tag-conversation","tag-cooking","tag-decision","tag-desktop","tag-dinner","tag-dryer","tag-dual-core","tag-email","tag-instruction","tag-juggling","tag-laundry","tag-machine","tag-memory","tag-muscle","tag-phone","tag-priority","tag-processor","tag-program","tag-quad-core","tag-queue","tag-washer","tag-workday"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nMost of us live our lives in a single-core scenario, even if we don\u2019t want to admit it.\u00a0\u00a0Instructions must be processed in a queue, and that queue may also include decisions, actions, and conversations. You may, for example, be on the phone and reading email “at the same time.”\u00a0\u00a0Face it: you will miss a few words of the conversation if you read each word of the email. Or you will merely scan the email for important words or phrases so as to not miss anything important in the conversation.\u00a0\u00a0But it is simply not possible to pay adequate attention to the phone conversation to catch every word while genuinely reading the email.\u00a0\u00a0You cannot carry on two separate conversations simultaneously.\u00a0\u00a0You will switch back and forth between them, but you will not give them both your full attention at the same time. Having said that, it is possible to engage in one activity that requires a great deal of attention and another that requires almost no attention. Examples of this: stirring a pot of soup on the stove while conversing with the children about homework; raking leaves while you converse on the phone. That\u2019s because you can make use of muscle memory. \u00a0But if something happens to require more of you than your muscle memory can handle on its own, you will divert your attention from the primary activity onto the muscle-memory task.<\/p>\n