Hi.  I am a list maker.

Sounds like the opening of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

I find lists help me to organize and prioritize all sorts of things.  I make shopping lists.  I make lists of tasks at the office.  I make gift lists.  I have my kids make lists: of their holiday gift wishes, their friends’ names and phone numbers.

Lists help me remember.  Lists allow me to go along through life without feeling that I have to memorize every spare detail.  If I write things down, I don’t have to memorize them.  I used to think I had a good memory.

One aside is that my nickname at home is the “Find-inator,” like the Terminator, but for locating lost or misplaced objects.  Part of that is based on an ability to remember visual details; the other part is more about what the Cat in the Hat called “Calculatus Eliminatus”—the process of finding something by finding “where it’s not.”

In retrospect, I realize that my memory is nothing special — I was just good at keeping track of my lists.  Let me be clear: I forget a lot of things.  Things that don’t resonate or strike me as important don’t go into the brain’s hard drive. Like many guys, I find it hard to recall what someone wore to a particular occasion.  I don’t remember the food unless it was something extra-special.

I wouldn’t characterize my list-making as obsessive.  A few years ago, I worked with a young woman who was.  She was a local girl from upstate New York with aspirations of being a Rock singer.  I never heard her sing, but she dressed the part: pale skin, blond hair, black roots, dark eye-shadow with a thick Longuh Eyeland accent.  We sat near each other, and between phone calls, she worked on her legal pads.  A yellow page would be covered margin-to-margin, every line with words.  So many words.  Pages and pages of words.  It looked serious…very serious. What did it all mean? Was it a treatise on modern office life?  A book manuscript?

After a few weeks, my curiosity could no longer be ignored, and I asked about the notes.  The answer was very simple: “It’s just my tuh doose.  See, I write down all of my projects and all the related phone numbers and activities, and then as I go through my day, I mark them out with a line.  Then the next day I recopy what is left.”

I was incredulous: “So you rewrite the pages every day?”

“Yeah, how else could I keep up with what I have to do?”

That’s different strokes for different folks, but it seemed to me that her day was 50 percent activity and 50 percent rewriting her notes to herself.  She was always busy, but imagine what she could have accomplished during all those hours of meticulous notes?

Exercising Your Priorities

Lists can be overwhelming.  Simply compiling a decent, comprehensive list is can chore in itself, but one worth completing.

To do lists need priorities.  Here’s an exercise.  Take some time and write out a bulleted list of things you need to do.  Make a complete list.  Place completion dates by each task.

Don’t worry if your list reaches a full page or longer.

Now number each task.  Look at the list and work through the priorities.  Which are the most important tasks?

Think about chronology.  What has to be done before others can happen?  Is one task contingent upon completion of another?  Assign new numbers accordingly.

Look at the list again.  Place the tasks in order of importance and/or by chronology.

Now — if the list is a page or longer, tear it in half. You heard me…tear the list in half. Just do it.

Now tear the half in half.  The remaining list should be no more than 4 or 5 tasks.  This is what you can reasonably expect to accomplish in a day or two.

On another page make another list of things that you want to do.  Prioritize and order them as well.

Pick one thing you want to do but haven’t, and add that to your new and improved (smaller) to do list.

Try this for two weeks.  For me, it was a revelation.  I got things done, knew that I was tackling the important things first or at least enabling future (more important) goals by knocking off minor ones along the way.  When I finished something on the list, I felt good.

If you accept this challenge, I’d love to hear how it went for you…

Some people in India perform many tasks simultaneously.Depending upon the number of tasks they perform, they are called ‘Ashtavadani( performs eight tasks simultaneosly,Dasa vadani(performs ten tasks)’.
These acts relate various disciplines, Maths,Vedic hymns, answering questions on music, performing one act with one hand and another with the other hand,Astrology,playing music, and many more.
Testing them would have yielded more insight.
Story:
Next to the many amazing feats our brain pulls off daily, its inferior ability to juggle a few simple tasks sticks out like a sore thumb. Now research from Vanderbilt University suggests that these limits on multitasking arise from slow processing in the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s central executive. Although the area has been known to be involved in multitasking, its exact role is a matter of debate.

Using functional MRI, the researchers found that when people were juggling two assignments, their prefrontal cortex appeared to deal with the tasks one by one—creating that familiar mental bottleneck—instead of processing them in parallel as do sensory and motor parts of the brain. With training the prefrontal activation time became shorter, cranking up the speed of the mental conveyor belt by about 10 times. Unfor tunately, the researchers note, the benefits of training might not apply to tasks other than those specifically practiced. “It’s not like you become able to multitask [with drills]; it’s just that you become able to do each task very quickly,” says cognitive neuroscientist Paul Dux, now at the University of Queensland in ­Australia, who conducted the experiment.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=mental-bottleneck

A while back I added a post on how we are not wired to multitask.  Recently one of my articles on multitasking was published in the online magazine The New Face of Leadership.  You can access it by clicking here.

I would love to hear your thoughts, so remember to come back and post your comments.

LIFESTYLE MANAGEMENT

Are You a Victim of Hurry Sickness

By

VIKRAM KARVE

A central element of lifestyle management is the skill to creatively balance achievement and work success with leisure activities, family life and social involvements.

Another critical aspect is the ability to feel comfortable at work and at home and to enjoy the experience of whatever is being done at that moment.

But nowadays, most of us are obsessed with getting results or completing one’s task. When task completion becomes more important than enjoying and understanding the work or activity one is doing at the given moment, a sure victim of “hurry sickness” is born.

The resultant constant sense of urgency is the trap of hurry sickness. One rushes to “get things done” to the point where it becomes an obsession.

Breaking this syndrome requires that you learn to enjoy experiences for the pleasure they give. When you gain pleasure from an experience, there is no need to get things done painstakingly.

Enjoy experiences, not rewards, and things will get done automatically without any constant stressful sense of urgency.

As defined from a psychological perspective, Hurry Sickness is:

“A pervasive and progressively urgent need to complete task in order to obtain rewards at completion without regard for other aspects of the work experience and by using maladaptive time strategies.”

They key causal factor in hurry sickness is the progressive need for task completion.

Enjoying what you are doing is neglected with a morbid urge to getting it done as quickly as possible, no matter what the activity.

The obsessive need for task completion extends to non-work involvements and activities like eating, playing, romance, making love, sex, leisure, having fun, loafing, taking a stroll, recreation, entertainment, leisure, sports, pastimes, hobbies, holidaying, exercising, lazing around, dozing, enjoying music, cooking, gardening, meditating, enjoying “doing nothing” and delightful timepass, what you consider “wasting your time” with your family, wife, kids, pet dog, friends…

This attitude of Hurry Sickness interferes with the enjoyment of these activities and experiences because of the persistent inclination to hurry up and finish it off.

Getting things done has become such a strong need because the payoffs or rewards for completion have assumed primary importance.

Your work experience has taught you that rewards always come at the end of the activity after you have put forth great effort to achieve a goal. You do not realize that happiness is not a destination but the manner of traveling.

Not only do you feel a sense of personal satisfaction from your achievements, but tangible rewards, such as promotion, cash incentives, awards, and advancements are given to you as well. With time, these rewards have become clearly linked with your self-esteem.

Each time you “succeed”, your ego, your inner self, sends a message to you which says, “You have done well. You are a commendable person because you succeeded again.” Your need for this kind of reassurance has become stronger than you would care to admit.

Time-Urgency quickly becomes a strong internal driving force towards task completion. Your life becomes a frenzy of completing one task after another. You are obsessed with time and wasting any of it becomes almost a mortal sin.

You strive to maximize your productivity by using time ever more efficiently, but you also have a sense that you are controlled by time and you don’t like it. Time is both your challenge and your enemy. A telling sign of hurry sickness is that even while relaxing, you are constantly fighting time-urgency and this that causes you unrest and never allows you to totally “switch off”.

Another way to seek to increase your output is to adopt maladaptive time-strategies. These questionable tactics do help you get more done over the short run, but you pay a heavy emotional price.

You now do everything faster, you have learned to “multitask” or “double up,” to do two or more things at once, and you are constantly preparing for what is coming next before you are finished what you are doing now.

The insidious trap is that you get something done quickly even when there is no reason to get anything done at all.

You hurry when there is no need to hurry – even when you have all the time in the world.

Because of your emphasis on task completion, you focus on finishing without regard for other holistic aspects of the experience.

In short, you have lost the ability to enjoy yourself while doing anything because of your incessant drive to get to the finish line.

Because you are afflicted by Hurry Sickness, you have lost the ability to emotionally rejuvenate yourself. Chronic fatigue and pessimism are symptoms of this malady.

SIGNS AND SIGNALS OF HURRY SICKNESS

Here are some behavioral signs, symptoms and signals that indicate hurry sickness:

1. Eating.

You now eat in the office while continuing to work or you just skip meals altogether. You multitask while eating. At home, you eat fast, gulp your food, finish meals well ahead of everyone else and eat in bigger bites without savoring the taste of food. Sharing pleasantries at the table is minimal because you cannot sit long enough. Ask yourself – are you eating mindfully and relishing every morsel of your food?

2. Sex.

Relaxed romantic sex and unhurried love-making is but a pleasant memory. The frequency has reduced and even when you do indulge in sex, it is a quick encounter and you are off to sleep or on to some other more “important” or “urgent” activity. Sex is less spontaneous and more mechanical these days. Love-making has become another hurry-up-and-get-it-done-with activity. Worse, you often indulge in “faking it” in order to get it over with in a hurry so you can quickly get on with the more “important” and “productive” things in life – your “high priority” activities!

3. Communications.

Your communication patterns now focus squarely on the negative. Feedback to others emphasizes mistakes and failings and you rarely compliment or offer sincere support to anyone these days. You don’t take the time any more for pleasant chat with family and colleagues. You have stopped listening. You make demands instead of working cooperatively with others or team-building. And hey, are you on your cell-phone most of the time?

4. Leisure.

You put aside less time for relaxation and you enjoy it less when you actually try to relax. Time-off is now more of a hassle than it is worth. When you sit still, you feel uncomfortable almost immediately. You have lost the ability to “do nothing” – it’s difficult for you to loosen up and enjoy an idle hour relaxing, doing nothing. Ask yourself why you work – reflect, contemplate, think about the fundamental reason why you work and realization will dawn upon you that the primary reason you work is to be able to enjoy your leisure, so why aren’t you taking a vacation every day and learning how to enjoy your leisure with full awareness?

5. Family.

Family members now “report” events to you, but you share little of yourself with them. You and your spouse argue more than you talk. The satisfactions of family life have diminished in quality and quantity. Your impatience is just as strong at home as in the office.

HOW TO CURE HURRY SICKNESS

Because you have hurry sickness, your initial tendency is to effect and expedite your “cure” in a hurry too.

But this hurry-up-and-get-it-done attitude may actually sabotage your recovery. What is required is patience, perspective and the ability to deal with setbacks in healthier ways.

It is easy to blame hurry sickness on the pressures of your job, the stress of daily living and what you have to do to survive in the fast paced world of today and on the insensitivity of the complex modern world. While each of these perceptions has a grain of truth in it, the fact remains that most of the responsibility for hurry sickness lies within you.

Your drive to get ahead is the real root of the problem and the fact is that you have lost all sense of perspective. Until you accept personal responsibility for your present state, you will not be in a position to confront and reverse the real mischief, damage and harm caused by hurry sickness.

Remember the well-known story of the hare and the tortoise.

Decelerate your life a bit, slow down, walk leisurely instead of driving and do not carry or switch off your cell-phone where you can, don’t multitask, do one thing at a time with full awareness and mindfulness and learn to enjoy the experience of whatever you are doing.

Do you believe in multitasking?

Are you a victim of Hurry Sickness?

Why don’t you rid yourself of this malady and enhance your quality of life?

Sure, you can get rid of Hurry Sickness!

Just stop multitasking and focus on whatever you are doing at the present moment.

Remember: HURRY BURRY SPOILS THE CURRY.

VIKRAM KARVE

Copyright © Vikram Karve 2009
Vikram Karve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

vikramkarve@sify.com

http://vikramkarve.sulekha.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/karve

http://www.ryze.com/go/karve

These amazing oven/stove combinations by Aga could heat up any kitchen, and to be honest get me heated up just looking at them.  How ingenious is it is have a combo of energy as well as utilization of spaces in one appliance that can meet all of your needs in the most simplistic method available…containment?

With these stoves you can cook, keep warm, broil, bake, sear, and roast all at the same time on the same appliance without having to having to stager your meal so that something is cold before you can serve it.   Now that we have satisfied one of my major checks on the list, function, lets look at the aesthetics of this “live in chef”.  The slightly retro’d look is easy to incorporate in umpteen of different design feels.  Clean and modern, eclectic, minimalistic, country, retro, traditional….it can basically be morphed into what ever feel you are trying to incorporate, and if you cannot visualize it, give me a call….it’s what I do!   The lines are simple with a little bulk to them, giving the piece some great sturdiness and visual weight and the fact that it can come in a plethora of colors only makes it that much more radtastic.

The materials are basic and straightforward keeping the focus on what it should be….cooking awesome food.  They are however made with durable cast iron covered by three coats of vitreous enamel so they are there to rock for year and years, and durability in a product is uber important when talking sustainability as well as the fact that a well made product can make your home stand out among others.

All in all, it gets an A+. Simplicity, function, aesthetics, and history of amazing performance puts this at the top of my “wish for someday when I have a house” list.  Now just to work on the whole house thing…..

Wenn fast alle schon fast alles gesagt haben, kommt Frank Schirrmacher mit einem von BILD und Spiegel hilfswillig verkaufsgeförderten Büchlein und sagt es noch mal. Mit mehr Pathos als andere. Gern auch mit ein paar falschen Zungenschlägen. Eine Geschichte, die vielleicht fünf bis zehn Seiten wert wäre, streckt er locker auf Buchumfang. So war es zum Beispiel beim “Methusalem-Komplott”, so ist es jetzt bei “Payback”.

In der Buchhandlung habe ich gestern kurz in Schirrmachers neuem Werk geblättert. Ich wusste aber schon vorher, dass das menschliche Hirn zu echtem Multitasking nicht fähig ist. Ständige Erreichbarkeit, das war bei Markteinführung des Handys aus einem Aphorismus von Johannes Gross zu lernen, ist das Schicksal der Domestiken. Schon Miriam Meckels Buch über das “Glück der Unerreichbarkeit” war insofern ziemlich entbehrlich. 

Dass nun das Internet mein Gehirn “vermanschen” wird, wie Schirrmacher gegenüber BILD warnt, glaube ich keine Sekunde.  Andere sind schon wieder weiter und warnen (nicht ganz ernst gemeint), dass Twitter blind mache. Und was soll man zu Schirrmacher-Weisheiten dieser Schießklasse sagen:

“Kein Mensch kann mehr daran zweifeln, dass wir in eine neue Ära eingetreten sind, aber die Zweifel, wohin sie uns führt, wachsen täglich.”

So habe ich in der Buchhandlung beschlossen, zwecks Vermeidung des Information Overload von der Lektüre des neuen Schirrmacher-Buches Abstand zu nehmen.

At the onedotzero event, I remember trying to get the N900 to crash with low memory errors or slow down. I couldn’t.

MySymbian proves this in the video below where the N900 is pushed to multitask all available apps. Where most others would have frozen, crashed or killed other applications to open a new one, the N900 juggles one new app after another without breaking into a sweat.

Whilst on the move, being able to handle several tasks simultaneously and quickly switch to the application at hand should be part definition of Smartphone.

Many smartphones can multitask – but they have a limit (and application switcher interface could be improved!*). Though you can be on guard and stick to the limit, sometimes you inadvertendly exceed that which will lead to problems of crashing, apps unintentionally closing and freezing.

The N900 bears this burden.

This would have been reason alone for me to get a N900 were I not trapped in another contract. Le Sigh.

I am however, concerned how much this multitasking will affect battery life (particularly as multitask apps are actively doing something, e.g. pulling data, accessing on board memory which is using power). Nevertheless, for me, battery life concerns are far outweighed by the advantages of multitasking without worrying too much that the phone won’t handle it and crash.

Via mysymbian

*N900 doesn’t just have static thumbnails or a set size window size or worse or just icons – it has dynamic live windows that alter in size the more windows you multitask – max  16 live windows viewable at one time. No guessing what application is which by their icon (especially if you have multiple browser windows open), no flicking through endlessly through big fat window/thumbnail representations alone.

Flexibler Mensch. Bogen überspannt? Was läuft zur Zeit an verknüpfungswürdigen Themen in der Medienwelt? Da wäre zum Beispiel der Herr Schirrrmacher, der mit seinem neuen Buch “Payback“ gerne nocheinmal in Erinnerung ruft, worunter wohl viele schon länger zu leiden haben, Die Ich-Erschöpfung, sueddeutsche.de, ganz nebenbei, gibt es hierzu noch mehr Literatur, welche auf Entwicklungen hindeuten kann, Fit und fertig – Gegen das Kaputtsparen von Menschen und für eine offene Zukunft. Das sogenannte Instrument Multitasking zumindest, scheint vielen Menschen wohl nicht so gut zu bekommen, überfrachtete Wahrnehmung mitten unter einer “autistischen Ökonomie“. Wohin das führen kann, bleibt wohl offen. Zumindest die Branche des Journalismus dürfte mittlerweile ebenso betroffen sein, wie die Kollegen Zeitarbeiter, Wie Unternehmen ihre Beschäftigten in Leiharbeiter verwandeln , wiwo.de. Panik, Penis,  Payback.

Ja, Panik – The Angst And The Money

One of the most value gifts you can give someone is your attention.  Think about the people you know that always seem the most popular.  They are the people who light up a room, who are well-liked and most personable.  Among other traits, most of them have one thing in common: they are good listeners.  What does that really mean?

Being a good listener means your attention is absolutely focused on the person in front of you, engaging fully.  Attention is like a mirror: you are presenting back to the speaker your absorption in what they are saying.  People love to talk about themselves and about their opinions.  When they have your complete attention, even for a short while, they come away feeling that you valued their comments and that even if you disagree, at least you let them present their story, viewpoint or observations. By extension, they come away feeling valued by you.

When your attention waivers, people notice.  They shut down because you are sending them a message that you don’t value their time.  In its essence, lack of attention boils down to this— as the Warden in the movie “Cool Hand Luke” said, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”  Perhaps some examples might help at this point.

True Life Scenario No. 1: Revolving door office

You stop by an office-mate’s desk to share an idea.  You tell him it will only take two minutes.  He welcomes you in, but leaves the door open.  As you begin to speak, a person comes to the door and interrupts with a minor question.  Your office-mate stops to answer.  It only takes two minutes.  Then you begin again.

After two minutes, another person stops by with some papers to sign.  Your office-mate reads and signs the paper.  You begin again.  The phone rings.  Your office-mate answers.  It’s just a short call, about two minutes.

Then you begin again.  Then the office-mate’s email signals an incoming message.  He turns to his computer, reads the email.  It only takes a minute or two.  You begin again.  It’s now about ten minutes since you arrived for your two-minute chat.  You’ve restarted the conversation three or four times.  Mental note to email the office-mate instead of trying meet with him.  A week he later asks you why you haven’t stopped by to chat lately.

Has this happened to you?

What to do:

Devote your attention to the person speaking, whether it’s face-to-face or on the phone or in a conference.  In all these moments, you are there because you need to be.  Someone needs to tell you something valuable and they want you to absorb it, process it and sometimes to act on the topic.  It may be because YOU need to tell THEM something that they need to absorb and act upon.  So be polite, but close the door or turn to the person interrupting and ask if they can wait just a bit for you to finish your business.  Say it with a smile.  It’s not rude; it’s efficient use of time.

True Life Scenario No. 2: Trapped with the Boss

You get a call from the Boss.  “Please come upstairs to review the coming month’s projects.  Bring your folders.”  You grab your folders and go up to his penthouse office.  You take seat in front of his chic Art Deco desk and begin to review the materials.  The phone rings.  It’s his assistant with an important call.

You rise to leave, but he waves you back into your seat.  It will only take a few minutes.  As the call spirals out into different subjects, you attempt to maintain a demeanor of nonchalance—you’re not really paying attention or eaves-dropping on his phone call.  The call goes on and on. It’s a sunny day. Oh look, a bird flew by.

You attempt to leave again, mouthing “I’ll come back later.” He waves you back to your seat.  Almost done.  You re-read the materials, page by page.  You trace the woodwork with your eyes. You notice that one corner of the wallpaper, way up high, is coming unstuck.

He hangs up the phone and you look at your watch.  It’s been 45 minutes and you have not even spoken an entire sentence.  He has to leave for a lunch with a board member.  The meeting will have to be rescheduled.

When the rescheduled meeting takes place, he chides you for not meeting with him sooner.  You write a short story imagining his murder.

What to do:

When the important call comes, go ahead and leave the room.  Speak to the assistant and ask that you be called when the boss is really free to meet with you.

True Life Scenario No. 3: Emergency Solitaire

The company is in crisis.  It has just lost a crucial and lucrative piece of business–lost its biggest client.  The company might go under.  The executive team calls an emergency “all hands on deck” Saturday seminar meeting to save the company.  It’s the most important work you’ve been asked to do.  You prepare a brief PowerPoint presentation with ideas for new directions to pursue for new business.

The seminar is packed.  The 30 top executives of the company are on hand, as well as the genius founder.  “How we got here,” “What can we do now?” and “Where we’re going” are the mandates of the day.  Everyone understands the stakes.  This is a make-it-or-break-it moment.  The air is electrified.

During the morning session, you notice a colleague across the table intently working on her Palm Pilot.  It seems that she’s capturing everything, taking complete notes.  After lunch you change your seat and move next to her, thinking that she must be generating fabulous ideas to help save the company.

The meeting resumes.  Your colleague whips out her Palm Pilot again and begins again…to intently play Solitaire.  That’s what she’s been doing all day.  The next week several people comment to you that they saw her playing Solitaire and how disappointed they were.  You keep the comments to yourself. The company goes under anyway. The Solitaire-playing colleague jumps to the departing client. You join some coworkers at another firm, life goes on.

What to do:

It’s simple—turn off or at least silence cell phones during meetings, any meetings.  If you do it in movie theaters and you can do it for PEOPLE.

Do not surf the Web or fiddle with your computer or cell phone during meetings. If your instant messenger, your Twitter feed or your email signals you that “you’ve got mail” — just ignore it.

Another way to give better attention is to turn away from distractions like a TV or computer screen.  If you have a swivel monitor, rotate it away from view.  Or move your computer screen to a less obtrusive place.

Who knows, you may find that YOU get more out of meetings too.

PS: In future posts we’ll talk more about active listening skills and Feng Shui for your office.

Nicht, dass ich was gegen Frauen hätte, im Gegenteil, aber ein paar Besondderheiten fallen mir immer wieder auf, vor allem im Supermarkt…
Ist Euch schon mal aufgefallen, dass Frauen gerne ihren Einkaufswagen durch die Regale schieben und dabei in alle Richtungen gucken, nur nicht in die, in die sie gerade gehen? Und wenn sie mich dann mit ihrem Gitterwagen anrempeln, ernte ich böse Blicke, wieso ich mich grade in ihren Weg stelle…
Ein Phänomen ist auch, dass Frauen Ihren Einkaufswagen gerne mit an die Kühltheke nehmen und in längs zur selbigen parken, während sie stundenlang nach dem fett- und geschmacksfreien Joghurt suchen, und dabei natürlich mit ihrem Wägelchen anderen Kunden den Zugang zu Quark, Käse und Buttermilch verwehren. Alternativ lassen sie den Wagen einfach mitten im Gang stehen, als hätten sie einer Blitzamnesie vergessen, dass das ihr Wagen ist.
An der Kasse sind die Frauen meine Favoriten, die den Wagen ziehen, satt schieben. Beim Einpacken der Waren ist das natürlich sehr unpraktisch, weil spätestens beim Kassieren der Wagen zwischen Kasse und Frau steht. Aber das macht ja nichts, da man eh erstmal in Ruhe weiter seine Sachen in Einkaufswagen legt, um dann pötzlich hektisch in der Handtasche nach dem Geldbeute zu kramen. Kommt dieser zu Vorschein, blinzeln zwei zugekniffene Augen auf das Display der Kasse. “13,28″ wiederholt die Kassenkraft geduldig. Etwas unkontrolliert wird im Kleingeldfach gekramt, anschließend wird dass Scheinefach examiert. Dann wird unwirsch die EC-Karte gezückt, als sei es ein Affront, für die Waren auch noch Geld zu verlangen…
Und was lehrt uns die Geschichte? Frauen sind doch nicht multitaskingfähig…

…nix für ungut!

Something lighter for your plate today. Chef Mark Bittman (aka “The Minimalist”)—we like that—has some fantastic suggestions for easy cuisine to help make your Thanksgiving high on taste and low on hassle.

Now, if there was only such a recipe to make difficult family members behave themselves…

from The New York Times, November 18, 2009

“The Minimalist”

101 Head Starts on the Day

By MARK BITTMAN

FOR cooks, most Thanksgiving problems are brought about by the sheer number of dishes competing for the stove: It’s not easy to roast a turkey and sweet potatoes for 20 at the same time. The best solution is to make food in advance, like one of the dishes that follow.

Unlike my earlier 101 compendiums, this one has some recipes that take an hour or more. Still, most are pretty quick. Almost all can be served at room temperature, although the soups should be reheated. Salting to taste is always a given. And if I don’t specify a temperature, “roast” or “bake” means a 375-degree oven. (…)

This one should bring back some memories of recipes from the old Andy Williams Variety Show:

60. Marshmallow topping for adults: Roast or boil chunks of sweet potato, put them in an oiled baking dish, top with dots of cream cheese, and sprinkle with a mixture of brown sugar, chopped pecans and chopped fresh sage. Broil until lightly browned.

And last, but not least from Bittman, an ultra-minimal recipe:

101. Buy some cheese. Unwrap it and put it on a plate with some walnuts and fruit; let come to room temperature. Serve with good bread.

See the full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/dining/18mini.html?_r=1&ref=dining&pagewanted=print

We may bemoan the treacheries and time-sucking nature of the Internet, but it sure has introduced me to some of the most fascinating people on the planet. When used mindfully, the Internet offers buckets of useful (and not so useful) information. With technological advances such as web-based video calls (aka Skype), twitter and Facebook, we have raised our awareness of how entangled we all are with one another. In a way, the World Wide Web has increased our consciousness of oneness.

I stumbled upon…ummm… I digged…nope. Let me start again. I met a fascinating performance consultant by the name of Mark K. Petruzzi on twitter. the other day. He tweeted about me. I tweeted about him. And before you knew it, we were Skyping about God, spirit and work-life solutions.

Life can be that grand.

With more than 15 years in corporate training with IBM, CIGNA Corporation, and General Physics Corporation, Mark has spent over three decades in the study of expansive inner life practice and 25 years in the study of enhancing job satisfaction through employee self-actualization. In short, he takes a “personal value” approach to work. Ten minutes with Mark will tell you he enjoys working with individuals and small groups, in business or private settings, as he helps them enhance both their personal and work lives.

Curious about his view of time starvation, I tossed out a few questions to get a sense of his relationship with time.

“If you feel a paucity of time,” he told me, “you literally are compressing it. We have to start trusting others and ourselves more. We need to know our lives will work out. Our point of power is in the now. If you give in to fifty distractions at every moment, you aren’t really living.” You are, in effect, merely breathing. And that rather breathlessly! The basis of his work, like the basis of mine, is choice. When we live in a mindful state, we reclaim our personal power.

We talked about the nobility of pain and how we might very well be addicted to the ways in which we maltreat ourselves. If you run about being so ‘busy’, you might really be missing the whole point. Allowing our ego the space to dwell within us is a great first step toward diffusing its power over us. Mark refutes the notion of the ego being ‘all bad’. Like a houseplant, it needs care and feeding like the rest of our being. I tend to acknowledge its cry so it doesn’t get louder (any parent of an infant will tell you that’s the best thing to do, especially in the middle of the night!). Loving the ego fosters compassion for ourselves and others.

On the road to time abundance, we need to recognize there is more to us than what we do, own or look like (Mark says I look like Laura Linney. Now, if I could only act like she does!). We are whole beings. When we are one with time, we can wrap ourselves in it like kings’ robes. You might even call it time-swathing.

Mark offers Inner Life Practice* workshops including Choice-Level Living, Choosing to Stress Less in a Stress More World, and Bringing Your Spirit to Work. He is currently writing The Desire Engine, a book about reclaiming our personal authority, and developing an inner life practice that fuels our internal “engine” of expansion and purpose fulfillment.
 
I’ll be the first in line to buy his book. May the spirit of time abundance, and the miracles of everyday living, give you the oxygen to breathe more fully this day and always!

 *If you’d like to connect with Mark, he suggests you check him out on Twitter @INrLifePractice. You can also find out more about him at http://bit.ly/enlightened.

There’s something wonderful about silence. In our modern lives, we so seldom have any of it. When was the last time you did anything — other than see a movie in a theater–without some additional soundtrack–no traffic, no talk radio, no music, no cellphones.  Silence, or at least some muted-volume version of life, is for me way up there as a much valued commodity, which no one has enough of, but is often under-valued. The original TV show “Get Smart” had a silly device for secret conversations between Maxwell Smart and the Chief called the “Cone of Silence.” It always cracks me up, but it makes a point: there are times when you just need some silence.

Story time

Let me paint you a picture. As a freshman at University of Texas at Austin, I lived in the Jester dorm (a somewhat ironic title, but the actual name of the place, no joke)–ten floors, 3,000 of your best friends.  Consequently it was very noisy and I found it hard to sleep, having grown up in what by comparison was the ultra-quiet suburbs. The freshmen neighbors with whom I shared a wall were fond of cranking their music after midnight. I like music, and I like loud music–a lot–but I also realized that I would not be able to survive and thrive on less than 4 hours of sleep each night.  My neighbors also had a habit of bouncing a rubber ball, a Spaldeen to be exact, against the wall at random hours of the day or night. Try reading or sleeping with “pah, dah, pause, dah, pah, pause” –wall, floor, catch, floor, wall, catch–for an hour. (Side note:  neither of these “party hearty” guys made it to sophomore year, but I digress.)

To cope with this noise level, I bought a pair of good headphones, not ear buds, full enclosed earphones. With them on, I could hear practically nothing of the outside noise. Even better, with the Classical FM station on low volume, wearing these in bed at night was something akin to an isolation chamber, but without the mind- and body-altering effects as seen in the 1980 sci-fi/cult/schlock film “Altered States,” in which William Hurt is magically transformed into a caveman by peyote.  With the headphones on, I slept well, passed my classes, graduated and went on the graduate school.

Story No.2

Later in life, I began to work more seriously as a professional writer and editor. I edited a few big books (100,000+ words) for an art museum, reviewing and revising the work of university professors and museum curators. At the same time, I set up a home office and began to work on projects there.  At the time, my kids were little and everyone who has kids knows that containing their volume at home is not really possible without Draconian measures. I remembered my college  strategy for coping with noise, but writing with music on proved too distracting. So I got a pair of ear protectors, like the ones used on a shooting range or flight line. When I put them on I would tell my wife, “I’m going into the ‘Cone of Silence’ for about an hour, so if you need to talk to me about anything important, please come see me face-to-face.” That worked, mostly. It required some give-and-take from all concerned. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am sorry to confess that this spillage of my work obligations into my personal life did not help my parenting or my marriage.)

But the main point is this: sometime you may need to establish your own Cone of Silence to deal with distractions. In the office, I’ve seen people use headphones in cube-land. For those that have an office door, just close it when you need to focus, and to be polite, put a sign outside that says simply “Please knock.” People will realize that you are working on something for which you need to focus and they will generally save non-essential interruptions for a time when your door is open.

For many writers, artists, graphic/web designers and even some computer programmers, they require a quiet place to work, apart from coworkers or family. That’s why people who have the means have private offices within their homes or a shack in the country. In some big cities, there are businesses where you rent a desk. Ginny Wiehardt, a Fiction Writing Guide at About.com, has posted a list of such places around the nation and the world at http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/startingtowrite/tp/urbanspaces.htm (thanks Ginny!) The key point here is that carving out a place and time to focus is a universal desire that you share with many other people.

You just have to make a step forward to try. Try headphones, ear protectors, a private room, a rental desk. The main things is to afford yourself a Cone of Silence that works for you. Send more ideas and examples!!

This week’s Der Spiegel has an interview with Umberto Eco on the subject of lists. Eco states that lists are stabs at immortality, an attempt to take control of the infinite through categorization:”We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That’s why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. We like lists because we don’t want to die.”

I’ve always attributed it to something less grandiose, the desire not to squander whatever limited time we have, or to just plain get organized.

Of course there’s always the old saw about cultural insecurity, particularly among Americans. Lists of cultural artifacts, books, paintings, films,  have often been a quick way to stack ourselves up against others — “At least I’ve read Proust. Sniff.” I’ve seen evidence of this;  a few months back, in fact, I was appalled when a social networking friend humorlessly posted the Booker list, and then checked off each one he had read, even adding the number of times read in parentheses. But we’ll leave him to his demons, and as long as one uses them playfully, lists can be good references, to safely shake us out of our habits, show us something new.

A few weeks back though, when jotting down ideas for a list-based project, I was suddenly overtaken by a severe, albeit brief spell of depression, not about mortality as Eco argues, but the recent prevalence of list-making in popular culture.

“The list doesn’t destroy culture; it creates it.” Eco says. “Wherever you look in cultural history, you will find lists.”

But if the list creates culture, what in fact is behind the creation of the lists?

I began to wonder about the increasing presence of the list, and not just those numbered sets of bullet points, but graphic organizers, Powerpoints, and so many creative works gleefully basing their form on the dumbed down worksheet absurdities of K-12 education. Take Sufjan Stephen’s grandiose plan to record an album for each of the 50 states, or the graphs albeit tongue-in-cheek in the Believer. This reverie then glommed onto NaNoWriMo, Edmo, Drunkmo, all of these attempts to impose creativity through organized allotments of time or space.

I’m not out to bash these things. I’m a participant in this year’s NaNoWriMo and believe me, it’s good to be writing rather than fretting over where my life is going. Besides, when you’re looking to brainstorm fiction ideas, lists are an insanely effective way to tap memories and ideas you had no clue were there.

But I also wonder if this recent surge in list making might not also be the result of our waning ability to organize our own thoughts.

Take research on multitasking, the implications of which are ignored in inverse proportion to the frightening results. According to an August article in Wired, Dr. Clifford Nass found that multitaskers do poorly on cognitive tests, showing an inability to ignore “irrelevant” information.“Whether people with a predisposition to multitask happen to be mentally disorganized, or if multitasking feeds the condition — “that’s the million dollar question.”

To add a ten-dollar question of my own, is this mental disorganization being fed by the computer, and is that in turn stoking our desire for order; is the smog build up in our gray matter behind our recent, and often misguided attempts to assign rank to novels, works of art, or experience itself? As much as I enjoy checking them off, you’ve got to admit that the 1001 Books/Places/Painting/Records to Read/Visit/See/Hear Before You Die series is not the end all and be all of taste.

As Nass states, acts of multitasking involve exploration, the act of gathering up as much information as possible over exploitation, focused concentration on what we’ve gathered. All of these lists seem provide the promise of exploitation, or a false sense of mastery over that information. But more importantly, I think they attract us because we can sense something is wrong. Lists provide a simplified route to exploitation, a cognitive lifeline to those flailing about in a morass of often irrelevant information.

Consider this: our brains may find distractions so tempting because  they are hard-wired to find distractions rewarding or helpful–perhaps as a mechanism of protection in more primitive times?

[Scene:  Plains of the African savanna, 3.2 million years ago]

Lucy: “Hey, Ardi, com’ere — finding some good fruit under this tree.”

Ardi: “Thanks for the tip. Sure am glad we can speak face to face without distractions, aren’t you?”

Lucy: “Indeed. I just hate it when Mogthar interrupts me while I’m gathering fruit.”

Ardi: “Holy crap! A leopard! Run for it (bipedally!)”

However, being interrupted about an approaching leopard while hunting fruit is far different than being bombarded by modern stimuli. Brandon Keim of WIRED interviewed researcher Maggie Jackson about our brains and distractions…

Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains

By Brandon Keim , February 6, 2009  |

Paying attention isn’t a simple act of self-discipline, but a cognitive ability with deep neurobiological roots — and this complex faculty, says Maggie Jackson, is being woefully undermined by how we’re living.

In Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, Jackson explores the effects of “our high-speed, overloaded, split-focus and even cybercentric society” on attention. It’s not a pretty picture: a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets is part of an institutionalized culture of interruption, and makes it hard to concentrate and think creatively.

Of course, every modern age is troubled by its new technologies. “The telegraph might have done just as much to the psyche [of] Victorians as the Blackberry does to us,” said Jackson. “But at the same time, that doesn’t mean that nothing has changed. The question is, how do we confront our own challenges?”

Wired.com talked to Jackson about attention and its loss.

Wired.com: Is there an actual scientific basis of attention?

Maggie Jackson: In the last 30 or 40 years, scientists have made inroads into understanding its underlying mechanisms and physiology. Attention is now considered an organ system. It has its own circuitry in the brain, and there are specialized networks carrying out its different forms. Each is very specific and can be traced through neuroimaging and even some genetic research.

While there is still debate among attention scientists, most now conclude that there are three types of attention. The first is orienting — the flashlight of your mind. In the case of visual attention, it involves parts of the brain including the parietal lobe, a brain area related to sensory processing. To orient to new stimuli, two parts of the parietal lobe work with brain sections related to frontal eye fields. This is what develops in an infants’ brain, allowing them to focus on something new in their environment.

The second type of attention spans the spectrum of response states, from sleepiness to complete alertness. The third type is executive attention: planning, judgment, resolving conflicting information. The heart of this is the anterior cingulate — an ancient, tiny part of the brain that is now at the heart of our higher-order skills. It’s executive attention that lets us move us beyond our impulsive selves, to plan for the future and understand abstraction.

We are programmed to be interrupted. We get an adrenalin jolt when orienting to new stimuli: Our body actually rewards us for paying attention to the new. So in this very fast-paced world, it’s easy and tempting to always react to the new thing. But when we live in a reactive way, we minimize our capacity to pursue goals.

Wired.com: What does it mean to be distracted?

Jackson: Literally, it means to be pulled away to something secondary. There’s also an a interesting, archaic definition that fell out of favor in the 18th century: being pulled to pieces, being scattered. I think that’s a lovely term.

Our society right now is filled with lovely distractions — we have so much portable escapism and mediated fantasy — but that’s just one issue. The other is interruption — multitasking, the fragmentation of thought and time. We’re living in highly interrupted ways. Studies show that information workers now switch tasks an average of every three minutes throughout the day. Of course that’s what we have to do to live in this complicated world.

Wired.com: How do these interruptions affect us?

Jackson: This degree of interruption is correlated with stress and frustration and lowered creativity. That makes sense.
When you’re scattered and diffuse, you’re less creative. When your times of reflection are always punctured, it’s hard to go deeply into problem-solving, into relating, into thinking.

These are the problems of attention in our new world. Gadgets and technologies give us extraordinary opportunities, the potential to connect and to learn. At the same time, we’ve created a culture, and are making choices, that undermine our powers of attention. (…)

read the full article at: URL:  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/attentionlost/

I like to push computers to maximum productivity, this time I as was working on a 1.7 GHz Pentium4 Celeron PC equipped with 512MB of RAM, here are the applications I was using:

• OS – Windows XP
• Virtualization Client – VirtualBox, with Xubuntu Linux (an Ubuntu derivative) as the guest OS, which is running:
  • Haskell compiler – GHC (not shown on the screen-shot)
• Web Browser – Qt Demo Browser, a WebKit-based light-weight web browser, and is one of the examples shipped with Qt
• Media Player – Media Player Classic
• Code Editor – Notepad++
• In addition to an active broad-band internet connection

Multitasking is a tempting, but delusional, solution to a busy life. I do this all the time, anyway, usually by reading during meal time. But, doing one thing at a time is probably a better way to go.

Tanpa kamu sadari begitu banyak pekerjaan yang dapat kamu lakukan secara sekaligus di tiap harinya dan lama kelamaan menjadikannya sebagai kebiasaan. Ketika kita mencari tugas sekolah dengan browsing internet yang tentunya dengan kecanggihan teknologi yang sekarang, tidak mungkin rasanya hanya berjalan lurus dan fokus pada tugas yang diberikan. Sambil menunggu lamanya proses download, tidak sesekali kita berbelok membuka facebook, twitter dan sebagainya. Sementara iPod kita  juga masih bernyanyi merdu menyuguhkan bermacam-macam lagu yang kita inginkan. Seperti itulah multitasking yang makin berkembangnya teknologi semakin membuat para peng-gilanya tidak puas hanya melakukan satu kegiatan pasti.

Bagi sebagian dari kita, multitatasking mungkin sarana yang baik untuk pembelajaran. Namun sebenarnya justru makin menjerumuskan kita untuk tidak fokus terhadap apa sebenarnya yang ingin kita selesaikan. Akhirnya banyak tugas yang terbengkalai karena ketidakefektifan kita mengolah perkembangan teknologi.

Waah, sepertinya bahaya juga jika sindrom seperi ini terus diminati remaja. Jika merasa manusia ber-multitasking, ada beberapa tips nih untuk mengurangi kebiasaan tersebut:

Buatlah Agenda

Buatlah daftar kegiatan dan target-target harian dan mingguan kita secara jelas dan tepatilah. Daftar kegiatan ini akan memacu kita untuk bekerja lebih efektif dan mengesampingkan hal-hal yang akan mengganggu pekerjaan. Jika kita tidak memiliki agenda yang jelas, kita akan mudah merasa bahwa kita memiliki waktu luang yang bisa dipakai untuk ngebrowsing hal-hal yang masih bisa dikesampingkan.

Jangan Takut Mematikan Alat Komunikasi

Alat komunikasi memang sangat penting namun tidak mesti buka 24 jam penuh kan (kayak mau nyaingin CK aja)

Tetapkan Waktu-Waktu Bersosialisasi di Dunia Maya

Ber-FB atau ber-Twitter ria memang tidak akan ada habisnya. Oleh karena itu penting bagi kita untuk menetapkan waktu-waktu tertentu untuk ber-FB misalnya saat istirahat siang, atau dalam perjalanan menuju sekolah agar FB tidak mengganggu pekerjaan dan kehidupan pribadi kita.

Sadarkan Diri

Tips-tips ini tidak ada yang berhasil membuat kita bekerja efektif tanpa terganggu chatting, FB, atau membalas e-mail? Tiap 5-10 menit sekali cobalah ”sadarkan diri” kita dengan bertanya, ”Apakah saya sungguh-sungguh perlu melakukan hal yang saya lakukan sekarang ini?”

Teknologi Bukan Segalagalanya

yakinkanlah diri Anda, bahwa tanpa teknologi pun kita dapat berkomunikasi dengan baik dengan keluarga, teman ataupun pasangan kita

My therapist is constantly trying to get me to stop and smell the roses. I understand the merit of this, and I’m doing my best to slow down (see: Fitting In The Me Days), but I have to wonder, is there such a thing as slowing down too much?

Apparently so. A new French study finds that seniors who walk faster tend to live longer. Turns out that brisk walking helps old folks keep their hearts healthy. While that may not sound like much of an “aha” moment, it made me think about what Generations X and Y might be like as old people. Sure, we’re heavily affected by the obesity epidemic and having been born in the digital age, we tend to be more sedentary that previous generations. However, we’re also adept multitaskers and we’re marked by an intense desire to avoid becoming corporate wage slaves like our parents. We want to DO and SEE more than any other generation…or at least that’s my perception. So will those propensities and desires keep us buzzing too and fro? Or will we literally be weighed down? And for those of us who do GO GO GO all the time, will we end up just as sick and damaged because we didn’t take the time to de-stress?

These are my wonderings as I attempt to strike a balance in my own life. And I’ve got to laugh at myself a little bit, because I consider my blogging time to be relaxing time….but here I am, typing furiously as a load of laundry churns in the washer and I compulsively check my work email for an interview that’s supposed to be coming in today.

I know I’ll end up being a fast walking old lady, but if I can’t slow down sometimes, I wonder how much good my quickly falling footsteps will do me.

– Posted By C.

I had an IT crisis a few weeks ago when not just one thing went wrong! From broadband problems to my laptop crashing and lots of other things in-between, I was feeling challenged and had to approach my work in completely new ways so that my productivity wouldn’t go totally out of the window.

The one thing that helped me work smarter during this time was grouping (or batching) different tasks, and applying this technique consistently. Grouping or batching tasks makes so much sense as you end up being quicker, having fewer distractions and less temptation to multi-task!

For example, as I had lots of internet down time I was forced to plan my online and offline time separately. Carrying out my online tasks remotely once a day encouraged me to batch them and also to group offline tasks, to be carried out during the rest of the day.

So let’s assume your to-do list says you should do some invoicing, emailing and filing. Let’s think of invoicing as task 1, emailing as task 2, and filing as task 3.

If you were working on three different client projects (A, B & C), would you prefer to do emailing, filing and invoicing for project A first, then the same for project B and C?

If your preference is to work this way, imagine you are cooking a meal. Let’s say you cooked a starter and a main course that both included onions. Would you slice the onions for the starter first, then complete that dish and then slice the onions for the main course?
I always get out all the ingredients that are needed to prepare the whole meal. I then prepare all vegetables and fruit in one go, which is so much faster overall!

All it requires is a little more forethought by imagining the final meal, its courses and their relevant preparation times. You then put them in order – not necessarily as they are eaten, but as they are prepared, with the goal of minimising effort and preparation time.

The same applies to your work projects. When working on 3 different projects (A, B & C), don’t be tempted to do filing and invoicing for project A first, before tackling project B and C!

It is far more efficient to group all emailing tasks (1), all invoicing (2) and all filing tasks (3) as in ‘A1, B1, C1’ followed by ‘A2, B2, C2’ and so on….

When you approach all your work projects in this way, even downtime on the internet can have its advantages!

By Ute Wieczorek-King, copyright November 2009

Ute Wieczorek-King is an experienced trainer, mentor, business coach and facilitator who specialises in business and career development, time management and personal effectiveness. As an expert in balancing lots of different commitments, she enjoys helping other busy women achieve more in less time, with less stress. She also supports women via Success Network, a not-for-profit business community which can be found at http://www.successnetwork.org.uk

We’re on the same wavelength as Mark Bauerlein…

September 30, 2009, 02:00 PM ET

By Mark Bauerlein from The Chronicle of Higher Education

At first I thought that multitasking was just a bogus concept, on the one hand an obvious truth and on the other an obvious falsehood. If multitasking meant reading a book while listening to music, of course it happened, and had happened long before the term “multitasking” ever came along. But if multitasking meant talking on the phone while doing email, or doing homework while watching TV, or carrying on six chats on your laptop — no way. Those activities exercise the same parts of your brain, and in order to do them you don’t multitask, you switch-task.  And the bad part is that in the switching process you have a warm-up time with the new task before you reach full engagement with it. Doing those things at the same time actually ends up taking longer than doing those things one after the other.

But the dangers of multitasking go beyond inefficiency. Here’s a page from the New York Times entitled “Driven to Distraction.” It presents a series of reports and stories on “the dangers of drivers using cellphones and other electronic devices.” Many people think that talking on the phone and driving are activities that don’t interfere with one another, but the accident statistics don’t lie. One story there notes that Utah has a new state law decreeing that drivers who text and cause fatal accidents are subject to a 15-year prison term and $10,000 fine.

Another story finds that most people are, indeed, aware of the driving-while-tasking problem, but they just can’t help doing it anyway. Take away the freedom to text while driving and people get nervous. I felt it last summer when I left a talk-all-you-want state (Georgia) to live in California for a month, where no handheld devices are allowed.

The health problems don’t apply only to driving. Here’s a study out of Stanford that announces,

Media multitaskers pay mental price, Stanford study shows

Think you can talk on the phone, send an instant message and read your e-mail all at once? Stanford researchers say even trying may impair your cognitive control.

The primary finding was that “People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time.” When people spend months and years trying to multitask, their mental habits follow. Most important, their capacity to filter out distractions and irrelevant items deteriorates. As one of the researchers put it, “They’re suckers for irrelevancy.” The researchers set up experiments that isolated the ability to ignore things that didn’t help subjects complete a problem, and low-multitaskers did well, high-multitaskers poorly.

They also did some memory tests. Result: “The low multitaskers did great,” [researcher] Ophir said. “The high multitaskers were doing worse and worse the further they went along because they kept seeing more letters and had difficulty keeping them sorted in their brains.”

Finally, they did a test of concentration and the pattern held.

“Again, the heavy multitaskers underperformed the light multitaskers. ‘They couldn’t help thinking about the task they weren’t doing,’ Ophir said. ‘The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can’t keep things separate in their minds.’”

So all those fans of multitasking who claimed that the interactive, multiplicitous Web

Moving is and isn’t good for the body. Yes, I’m hauling boxes all day and being very physically active. But yes, I’m also eating pizza, ready made meals and endless slices of bread and cheese because there is no way that anyone with any small sense of reason can cook in a kitchen that is as upside-down as mine. And this evening my wonderful French fiance went and bought me a bottle of champagne (not sparkling wine, champagne!!!), and if that isn’t an ideal way to wind down after a day of moving mania, I don’t know what is.

I haven’t gotten on the scale because, as you might have gathered, it’s in a cardboard box. I’ve been at 135 for over a month now. I don’t expect much change. I think that if I want to progress from here, and lose the rest of the baby fat that I have always carried with me, I will have to make significant dietary and exercise changes. And right now, with a little baby, the move and everything else that’s going on, that’s just not on the cards.

My fiance Max has also launched his big project Myows – an online copyright management app. He’s worked his butt off for the last year and a half and it finally launched less than 48 hours ago. The feedback is awesome so far. So these are exciting times, to say the least.

I’m turning in for an early night. All this champagne has my eyelids drooping! And tomorrow there are more boxes, boxes, boxes. Let’s just hope that my dreams tonight are not swathed in cardboard and newspaper!

The Past:

The phone rang, then the cell phone, a texts came in, there is a conversation happening on Facebook, Ping – something from twitter, a co-worker just IM’d me, the emails keep popping up in the corner of the screen, and then someone walked into my office.

Now –

I work from home. I can control my environment! Yet much of what interrupted me still exists. Writing takes focus as does researching. So as an exercise in procrastination I thought I would research the science around interruptions. The way most of us handle interruptions is to swear that we are multitasking. We aren’t.

The Myth of Multitasking

Most of us now know that we don’t really multitask – what our brain does is switch between tasks very fasts. So fast in fact that it looks like we are doing two things at the same time. Like all human traits – some of us do this switching better than others. However, it isn’t optimal behavior and on some level we all know this.

But there is hope – a recent study published in the journal Neuron states that we can train our brain to get better at multitasking. But we are still simply learning to switch between tasks quicker – we are not developing dual core processing.

So we can get better but then there is the problem that too much multitasking causes breakdowns in our decision making.

Our lives are full of interruptions and processing interruptions can become difficult. That too is a task and one that we have to process quickly. Research is showing that the more people use tools of interruption (CrackBerry’s make it high on the list although all you iPhone lovers your there too) the more trouble they have deciding when to focus on an interruption or let it go.

Does that mean that interruptions are addictive? That the constant change in direction is somehow stimulating something in the brain?

A fascinating study published in 2006 exploring the “Social Implication of Ubiquitous Wireless Email Devices” looked at a small company that provided BlackBerrys for nearly 90% of their staff since 1999. What they saw was a burling of the lines between business and home, and expectation to be “always-available”, at the same time as partners in the firm found it a way to get more done, achieve more transparency in their business dealings and have more control. Yet the BlackBerrys became a device of constant interruption, effecting meetings, vacations, and general business life.

We don’t have to react to everything – but often we try to.

That stream of emails, tweets, texts, and IMs that come into us – how many are actually time sensitive and project related as opposed to all those other pieces of information that clutter our lives. Yes – the cute pictures of animals doing funny things with witty captions is a nice way to bring a smile to our day but how much time did we just lose? And did you go back to what you were doing or did you decide to read some more emails, send a text, tweet something, or surf the web?

The general rule of thumb is that once interrupted it takes between 20 to 40 minutes to get back to the level of concentration that you were at when the interruption occurred. (Different studies have different time factors – personally I think it has to do with the complexity of the core task.) The interesting thing is – how many of us go through our work lives these days able to commit 20 minutes to a specific task. An article in Newsweek puts the amount of time the average High Tech worker focuses on a project before being interrupted at 11 minutes. Worse off, IT workers are switching direction every 3 minutes. The research done with the company full of BlackBerry addicts had people checking their BlackBerrys every “every seven or eight minutes”.   

Who closes the office door, puts the phone on silent or do-not-disturb, closed down Outlook and works?

I tried – and it backfired on me. Within one week I was getting feedback that I was “unreachable” and “not in the office” because I wasn’t seen and being seen. But I was getting lots of work done… but no one noticed because in our environment face time was used to measure productivity and cooperation. “Drop everything and help me!” was not an uncommon cry. But I’m uncertain of the productivity value it brought – it may have build a can-do lets dig in and get it done atmosphere – but it also led to very long days for those who had highly complicated projects. They could only get them done early in the morning or late at night.

So then work-life balance goes out the window. Wasn’t this what we thought being connected anywhere any time help us with. We wouldn’t have to make the choice between family and work – we could do both. But in doing both we are engaging in neither. Several of the studies and articles I read discussed a sense of “partial-participation” in life. We never sink down to a level of true focus, we are multitasking so fast that we don’t focus or take time to connect with others, we use the buffer of the iPhone, Facebook, or Twitter to find some strange place between closeness and distance.

It will take us time to figure out how to deal with this – the overwhelming amount of information flowing under our fingertips, the blurring of lines between work and home, and adapting to a world where we are interrupted every 8 minutes.

Personally I love the access to information, the feeling of having my finger on the pulse. But I also like to ponder things. That takes time, silence and a closed door. I’m not sure where we are going with all of this and I am sure that we are not thinking much about the social and physiological consequences of it. All the new toys are just too much fun!

~ Tess