One Thing
August 31, 2009 by Janice
Ah- HAH! Our week’s just got simpler. Yep. Stanford University just announced that people who do one thing at a time do things BETTER than multitaskers. Yes. See the little orange smiley and frownie faces in the photo, that’s what they are here to tell you.
Researchers at Stanford University were looking for the advantage, the edge that multitaskers have over everyone else, and they found, to their total shock, they don’t. Have an advantage that is. In fact. they are worse at doing all of it than those who do one thing at a time.
In fact, “multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy. ”
Hah.
Really, that’s directly from the sources mouth.
One thing at a time is better.
“The core of the problem,” Professor Ness said, is that multitaskers “think they’re great at what they do; and they’ve convinced everybody else they’re good at it, too.”
They are not.
Hm.
I am looking at that little striped to do list of mine a bit differently. I like Leo’s Zen Habits ( he is a huge cheerleader of one thing at a time) and his 3 Most Important Tasks. And Keep it Simple Silly is not a bad rule of thumb. And while I shake the cobwebs out of my Monday morning brain… I am thinking one thing. One thing that is most important for each day this week. Put just those down on those stripes and let the others go. See how that works out. Just one thing until it’s done.
Of course my mind is actually drifting up to that Hollywood Swimming Pool. Could be the last days of summer exerting their pull. But I wonder actually, have we become so accustomed to more than one thing that we have unwittingly trained our brains to skim over, dart, and hurry on…. rather than linger?
Because that’s the myth that is out there.. that we can have it all. Right now even. We live in an immediate gratification world. Real time technology reinforces that doesn’t it?
Ideas move through time and space easily. Physical things take a bit more time. I think sometimes we forget that and expect a little more from our physical selves than maybe is reasonable. As if we had mobile apps that did away with things like resistance and gravity and process.
The artist is smiling… wishing she DID have a mobile app that would take care of all those little time robbing things at the wiggle of a nose, or a phone. Has any one come up with that?
I ‘d like to point that app at my studio table. ( Scary) And at my desk ( a little less so but not great).. maybe the laundry ( easy peasy)… the fridge. ( Double scary).. correspondence ( behind)…my closet ( don’t open the door)…my sketchbooks ( (sigh)….my notebooks (waiting patiently)…those paintings( sigh again)…the writing ( oy )…
Oops… One thing. Pick one thing. Then the next.
They all call me equally on Mondays now. And as I begin to feel better, it’s actually harder to put them into order…not up to full speed yet so it seems like mountains and mountains of work. Well, it actually is.
So one thing. The concept is very appealing… but which one?
First these cobwebs in my brain this morning. I am wiggling my nose.. anything happening?
How about you? Organized yet this morning? What do you do when your work load seems overwhelming and your energy is not quite up there yet?
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13 Responses to “One Thing”
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Good morning, Janice. There really is only one thing, isn’t there? Right now it’s commenting on your post! Thanks for the friendly reminder.
Janice, I can attest that one thing at a time works. Admittedly, when I don’t quite want to do something, I fall back into the falsehood of multitasking. On days I am not quite there yet, I pick one easy thing from my master list and do it. I always feel better having a win under my belt and am then ready to tackle one more thing.
One thing indeed! And such a thing it is, because we’ve been led to believe that to work on one thing to the exclusion of all else must mean that the one thing is MOST IMPORTANT. Death defying, even. It makes it so hard to make the choice of which one thing to tackle first that I sometimes choose nothing. More’s the pity. I saw the study also, and thought to myself that since I was raised as an only child, I had the liberty to shut myself away and focus whenever I wanted, how beneficial that was. Now as the mother of 3 (albeit recently grown), I’m having to re-teach myself the level of attention that once came naturally. And it’s doubly hard because society no longer respects the uni-tasker (did I just make up a word?). Maybe the pendulum will swing back in favor of it. We would all benefit if it did!
[...] little place on the web. I think that’s how I first met lovely people like artists Diana Maus, Janice Cartier, and Ulla Hennig. Havi’s blog also introduced me to writers Chrissy Johnson and Emma Newman, who [...]
I take a 15 minute nap – it does wonders
I’m still hoping that Elizabeth Montgomery (Bewitched) will come and teach me how to twitch my nose so I won’t have to … do the laundry, clean the studio, hire a tree surgeon … etc. so I can just weave!
HAH! THat is a very important thing indeed Todd.
I love seeing you here. Hope your one things are going well. From the gorgeous photos in your newsletter I would say they are.
I am going to do something with my master list to simplify it. As we head down the home stretch of this year, I want to see if I am anywhere close to getting my 12 wishes ( one for each month of the year) See if I can make any of those the one thing I do get done by the end of Dec. Try the one thing at a time on those.
I love that! Uni-tasker!!!!! Like riding a uni-cycle to done… wish I were a cartoon illustrator, very cat in the hat, lemony snicket, tim burton-y thing…I think , like the slow food movement, maybe we could push this forward…
Yippee! I totally endorse power naps.
I am holding out hope for Samantha-like powers. So far, nothing happening along those lines, but I am not giving up…in the meantime I chose painting, that tower on my table is probably going to be next…it hasn’t fallen yet, but…one tremor and we’re in for it.
( Yay on the finished basket!!! BTW )
[...] a time is working really well. Organizing Monday shapes up rather simply. I have actually gotten all those troublesome things from last week done. One at a time. Surprise, surprise. And it didn’t seem as, hm, frenetic. I found good bones [...]
[...] little place on the web. I think that’s how I first met lovely people like artists Diana Maus, Janice Cartier, and Ulla Hennig. Havi’s blog also introduced me to writers Chrissy Johnson and Emma Newman, who [...]