It’s still January as I write this, but already I’m mentally focused on spring cleaning. I’m eager to reorganize my home, my work desk, and the way I approach my day. I really want to make time for activities I’d much rather do (most especially creative activities), but recognize I must first make room for those activities to happen.
I’ve always been a mega-multi-tasker… juggling a half-dozen tasks at once by giving each item on my list my full attention for only small periods of time, then circulating between them all in round-robin fashion until all are eventually completed (in theory) before end of day. For a long while there, I even got paid to juggle many things at once for other people—people above me on the food chain who didn’t have to bother with such things. In fact, that may be where I picked up this way of functioning in the first place.
It’s kinda like that one act I recall seeing on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was a kid—the guy who would spin a half-dozen plates at once, each plate on its own tall, wobbly pole. Once he got the first plate spinning for a bit, he’d move on to the next, and then the next and so on. By the time he finished tending to the sixth plate, he’d frantically run back to the first plate just in time to give it some help to keep it spinning, then on to the next… and next… and next. That’s me. I’m that guy, multitasking those plates–only with the caveat that by end of day, I’ve not actually tended to all six tasks/plates successfully. In my mind, I can still clearly hear the exact frantic music that played during the act on that show (in case you’re wondering, it’s Aram Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance from the Gayane Suite No. 3); I’ve even been known to ‘sing’ it out loud when I catch myself doing what I do. Apparently, somewhere along the way, that music became my personal theme song, and that act, my personal version of normal.
Click on the image below to listen to Khachaturian’s well-known masterpiece, “Sabre Dance”…
Yes, I used to be pretty good at it, or so I thought. Maybe all I was good at was committing to this particular way of dealing with the demands of life… a way that doesn’t really work for me anymore… a way that may not have been ‘normal’ at all. This year I think I’m gonna move myself up my own food chain and either pay someone else to do some of the tasks I don’t really want to do or take a hard look at what it is I really don’t need to juggle anymore. As is often said, ‘just because you can doesn’t mean you should.’
The more I stick with the old act of being a mega-multi-tasker, the less likely I’ll get to do all the cool creative stuff I’m constantly craving. Spring cleaning has begun. I’m getting rid of the unnecessary and making room for one of the best gifts we’ve been given in this busy, challenging world: CREATIVITY.
And while I’m at it, I’m totally changing up my personal theme song. I think I’ll toss the Ed Sullivan spinning-plate music and write my own music for my own life from here on.
So, I’m curious now… What, if anything, do you think you miss out on in life when you are multi-tasking? Is multi-tasking working okay for you? If multi-tasking is problematic for you, what, if any, workarounds or adjustments have you made to your multi-tasking tendencies to remedy those problems?
Make room for the good stuff!
Love to you always,
Susan Maddy J
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Susan Maddy J 