Are You a Multi-Tasker By Choice?

I love people who can multi-task.

I mean full up, full attention multi-taskings. Feed babies and do someone’s taxes and wash laundry at the same time. Someone who can use three full-sized computer screens at one time. Someone who walks the dog and listens to “Learn French in Three Days” on headphones while running through the IMDB movie database on their phone for a Japanese foreign film to watch when they get home.

Most of us do a fairly good job at multi-tasking. Cooking dinner while thumbing through an iPad while holding a conversation with someone in the next room is my idea of tasking to the N-th degree.

But more often I multi-task by accident. And it happens all the time.

Start working on a craft. Run upstairs to get some sort of supply. Notice the dryer is finished. Switch the laundry. Pull out the kitchen towels from the dry pile because the kitchen drawer is empty. Find the part for the craft. Answer the phone. Talk for 20 minutes. Pull out the embroidery kit you told your caller they could borrow so you don’t forget. Go into the frig for a soda. Eyeball yesterday’s leftover pizza. Heat it up in the micro. Let the dog out. Go to the bathroom. Notice you are low on toilet paper. Add it to the grocery list whiteboard. Grab the part you needed for your craft and take it back downstairs where this whole thing started.

Is this multi-tasking? Or is it A.D.D.?

I can’t tell you how many times I find myself swirling down this whirlpool. I do it all the time. I make my husband nuts.

~I~  see it as getting multi things done in one fine sweep. ~He~ considers it distracted and unproductive movements. That I’d get so much more done if I finished what I started when I start it.

Who wants to do laundry all day one day? Who can sit for eight hours and do one craft? I mean, even ~I~ have a hard time power watching more than six or seven TV episodes in one sitting.

I believe I do multi-task. I watch TV while I work on the computer. Listen to music while I balance my checkbook. Talk on the phone and sew buttons on shirts at the same time.

I think my husband just doesn’t get what multi-tasking really is.