It’s Friday, and for those of you math-savvy enough to do the calculations, it’s late in the afternoon here in Buenos Aires. I haven’t accomplished as much as I’d have liked to this week. Surprise!
Although there’s been a lot written about how much e-mail zaps your attention, I never wanted to think that my activities were included in any of those statistics. I use email for work! For important stuff! So why would it be wasting time or harmful to my productivity at all? I don’t try to write to do research while engaging in any other activity. I do one thing at a time. And yet, my efforts fell short of those of a Zen master. (Or at least someone whose Friday To Do list wasn’t nearly identical to their Monday To Do list.)
Yesterday, I read one study explaining why that makes a lot of sense. I engage in task-switching, not multi-tasking. When given free reign, people who are given two tasks to complete within 10 minutes will spend more time on the easier task, which is done to the detriment of accomplishing the second, more difficult task. So even though you may feel like you’re keeping busy, you’re just doing crap.
This reminds me of a quote by Thomas L. Goodale, in his essay, “Is There Enough Time?”
“Time scarcity or famine and the sense that there is never enough time leaves us anxious if not neurotic. We over focus on the present, press to accomplish an endless series of short-term tasks, and sense a lack of control. We seem to have a whole culture suffering from anxiety disorders… we are obsessive about planning, often in detail, and compulsive about executing the plans, although there is little extension into the future.”
There’s a key distinction between what’s important and what’s urgent. What’s urgent are the things right in front of your face that beep and have reduced us all to Pavlov’s dogs. What’s important are the things that, if you zoom out and can look at what you’re doing with a little detachment and distance, are really going to matter in the long run.
An author I interviewed this week told me that although she cherishes her faith and truly believes it, she still has to remind herself what’s important when she forgets, or when her beliefs are tested. Although I know what activities are important to me right now, they’re the more difficult and demanding ones that are easy to forget or ignore when something easier comes along. It’s easy to have your beliefs or priorities tested when it seems like everyone else in the world is shouting something different in your ear, telling you to pay attention to something else, even if it ultimately doesn’t matter.
