what I love about this notion of
multitasking is people brag about how
good they are at it in fact it's a lie
it's a lie we're telling ourselves over
and over again I have a friend named
Janice Martorano as a former executive
at General Mills and she now teaches
meditation to corporate executives all
over America and all over the world as
she pointed out to me multitasking is a
computer derived term computers have
many processors we have only one
processor
we literally neurologically cannot do
more than one thing at a time so every
time you think you're multitasking
essentially that's a short way of saying
you're doing many things poorly what
I've learned to do and it's hard is to
try to do one thing at a time so if I'm
on the phone I turn off my computer
monitor and actually listen radical as
it may sound to the person to whom I'm
speaking if I'm working on a story at
work writing a story I shut down my
email and try to actually focus on what
I'm doing and what I found is that I
move through my tasks in a much more
rapid way in a much more effective way
and I doing a better job now I'm gonna
lie to you there are times when we have
to multitask there's no question about
it
things get so hectic in my office and
I'm sure in the lives of anybody who's
watching this where multitasking becomes
impossible to avoid I found myself
walking down the hallway the other day
with a glass of water hanging out of my
mouth and I'm typing away on my
blackberry I'm walking at the same time
so I'm a huge hypocrite on this score
there's no question about it but I do my
best to avoid it because I know I do my
best work when I'm only doing one thing
at a time
you