Day Fifty-Two: The Dangers of Multitasking

As I was running errands today, I was caught behind a driver who I was sure was drunk at ten o'clock in the morning. As I got around the car, I shook my head in disbelief. The driver, a twenty-something idiot, was texting. That is taking multitasking to the level of insanity.

I am a multi-takser. I have to be with four boys to raise. I often cook, answer the phone, referee, clean and listen to my ipod every night while making dinner. Just try and call me around five p.m. and you will know what I'm talking about. I'm positive you will be sorry you called. Sometimes multi-tasking is a good thing, but mostly it is not.

I have noticed of late that I when I am doing two things at once, neither gets my full attention. When it really becomes a problem is when I do it with my kids. The hours between four and eight p.m. are crazy around here. Dinner, homework, baths, reading stories, cleaning up and anything else that needs attention all takes place in those four very short hours. I often become impatient because I can't concentrate on helping just one child at a time. My second and third graders need a bit of help and attention to complete their homework, and my three and six year old just do not understand the concept of playing quietly in the next room. I have finally realized that I cannot do more than one thing at a time during homework and that entails my husband being home from work to run interference. That isn't always possible. As a consequence, since school started again, I have been more exhausted than I have been in years; it is rivaling the exhaustion of having a baby that doesn't sleep through the night!

I must admit, I haven't done any bodily injury to myself or others while multitasking, at least not yet. I have been known to try to clean off the dust on the dashboard or trying to read the mini screen on the ipod to find the song I'm looking for while traveling down the highway at a speed slightly above the speed limit. That amounts to the same stupidity as drunken texter. I have tried to read a child's cartoon type drawing while slicing vegetables and chaos is unfolding around me. That is definitely an accident waiting to happen. I even vacuumed the hallway while kids were in the tub taking a bath. After hearing that a two year old drowned while his mother was doing exactly that, I have never taken the vacuum cleaner out during bath time again.

The lesson for us all- the drunken texter, the bath time vacuuming mother and me is that it doesn't help any of us to do two or more things at once. Nothing is done as well as it could be and something is always missed. Oprah spent a great deal of time last year touting the virtues of living in the moment. This is part of what she must have been talking about. We all do too much. We need to slow sown, take one thing at a time, one day at a time, one breath at a time. I am sure we will all be much happier keeping this mantra in mind. I don't want to learn this lesson the hard way like that mother did that fateful evening at bath time. I surely wouldn't want you to either.