multitasking is the devil

Last night, after spending hours on my laptop, I sat back in the chair and stared at the screen.

This is what I saw:

• 17 tabs split between two windows.

• 4 videos queued up on 4 separate tabs.

• 5 career sites opened

• 1 notepad window open

• A couple of sticky notes tabs open just for good measure.

It was then that I took in the sheer chaos I had been working in.

Am I making progress on any of these things? No.

Was I absorbing any of the information I was consuming? No.

Here’s a rough recreation of that:

I’ve had hundreds of nights where my screen looked just like this, and when I look back on those nights I see all the time I wasted.

In those moments, I thought I was reaching peak productivity. I thought I could do 12 tasks in half the time and get ahead (of who, I don’t know).

In reality, I was doing a whole lot of nothing, inundating myself with a bunch of meaningless rabbit holes and tasks.

What I thought I was giving vs. what I actually gave

Multitasking is often idolized in the media as an attribute all intelligent people must have.

And as creatives, we often idolize a frenzied approach to one’s craft. We picture a writer at their desk with thousands of papers scrabbled around them or a painter surrounded by messy brushes and easels.

But this is a facade.

Yes it may work for some people and some of those people are extremely talented, oftentimes, we neglect how sacred focus is and ignore how dangerous multitasking can be for us.

To steal…

Sometimes it feels like I want to do so many things that it would be impossible for me to do them all in one lifetime.

And when I feel like that, I automatically think that I need to somehow increase my pace in life, regardless of what’s physically possible.

I want to be a writer and a creative, but I also want to be able to pay rent.

So, I spend a good portion of my time pursuing online certificates and applying to jobs that I generally don’t have any interest in.

And I do these things because they are the “reasonable” things to do. They’re concrete and normal.

Yet, these tasks normally take up most of my day and have consequently made me into “a writer on occasion” instead of a writer.

I thought I could do both successfully, but my passion was slowly stolen from me.

Multitasking is contingent on the idea that we can equally spread our attention across several different things, yet that’s not how our brain works. Yes, the brain can process tons of information extremely quickly, but there’s a hierarchy of attention.

If every single piece of information we absorbed weighted the same in our minds we’d either be driven mad or we wouldn’t be able to function. The mind has to take shortcuts. It will lean towards the easier option most of the time. The option that puts up the least amount of resistance.

Now do I enjoy applying for jobs? No. I wouldn’t even it’s necessarily an easy thing to do. But when my mind weighed the certainty that a normal job would give versus the uncertainty and fear of pursuing my passion, it chose the former.

When I say my passion was being stolen from me, I don’t picture it as an armed robbery. It’s more like a white-collar crime.

A greedy businessman taking money, promising me wealth while he lines his pockets.

To kill…

My relationships have also fallen victim to my multitasking.

To listen to someone is an intimate activity. Something human connection requires.

I think about all the times I would be watching a video while on the phone with someone, or thinking about my to-do list when talking to coworkers.

I was worried about sacrificing my pace in life that give people the respect they deserve.

Yes, my time is important, but in those moments what I was doing wasn’t nearly as important as the human connections I was abandoning.

And if the task I was doing was important, I never did the common courtesy of setting a boundary or telling them that I needed to talk later.

Instead, I would try to do both, and either be annoyed or unresponsive.

This is especially terrible because I know how much it hurts to feel like someone isn’t listening to you.

It was self-absorbed and inconsiderate.

And there goes multitasking…

Killing my relationships.

To destroy.

Being focused in the modern age is like finding gold nuggets during the Gold Rush.

If you’re lucky enough to have it, then riches await you

Destruction.

As I looked at my screen that night I saw a glimpse of the destruction of my creative life.

I saw myself, scattered between so many different things and accomplishing nothing.

I saw myself pushing my dreams further and further away until they were nothing but a distant memory.

I love to say that consistency = results, but I failed to see that consistency requires focus.

If I believe I’m meant to do something. If I want to make the most of it. I have to place my full attention on it and I have to do that again and again and again.

So, like Jesus in the desert with the devil, I’m going to refuse the temptation. The temptation of multitasking that is.

I’ll refuse the false promise of productivity and success.

I'll drown everything out and focus I what I know I want (and need) to do.

Here’s to being a one-trick pony for a while.

Thanks for reading xx

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