My head is clogged, my plate is full, and all I can do is think about Kaarina Dillabough. She’s the one who said that multitasking is no tasking; that means I’m not concentrating when I sit on a conference call muted and empty my in box, tweet, or find a blog post to read. She suggests that brain power should focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking schmultitasking.
There’s a law firm in San Francisco that agrees with this statement. GJEL Accident Attorneys* works its mojo to inform anyone about the dangers of distracted driving from texting, mobile devices, and the DVD player on the front console (that’s my Highlander).
I already nicely disagreed, well vehemently disagreed, with Kaarina; there’s absolutely no flippin’ way I’m able to do nothing on a dead conference call. Maybe I can clean my desk and contribute uh-huh every now and again; I’m listening, but doing nothing is a time waste.
That’s why I have to tweet a webinar when I’m on one; I can type in real time, so I capture 95 percent of what’s being said and I can paraphrase well, too, for a tweet. Is that stupid multitasking? Or, is that fruitful social media for clients who want to see their name in lights? Not sure.
Maybe we need to look at that personality thing; and, no, I didn’t say personality disorder. I know my friend Jenn Whinnem (whose birthday is today, mind you) will pipe in and call me a letter. And, my other friend Gin Blossom will say we’re the same person and that’s why we’re both type A PR (that’s agency public relations or you can read it the way you started to).
So, I’m gonna ask y’all – is multitasking bad in all circumstances? I will absolutely agree that I can’t define multitasking as checking the crackberry during a meal; that’s just plain rudeness, unless…OK, that’s just plain rudeness.
I think I’m on to something…we can blame multitasking on the digital age. I have no solution for that because as I sit here yakking about my inability to focus on one thing at a time, someone is launching a new app I need to check out and there’s a tweet in my box that just arrived, and I just heard the chimes of a text message roll in, and let’s not forget the lovely sweet sound of kidlet just waking up on the first day of summer.
Is multitasking bad all the time?
(*client)/Image by Crystalinks.com
