Multi-taskers, beware!

 If nothing else, the Rain Man could focus. 

Turns out, multi-tasking is a bust anyway.  Research now shows that multi-taskers get less done, are crabbier and frequently irritate those around them.

That was me back in the days of my employment.  Or as we say in English, “That was I.” 

Now, in my leisure, I’m a ray of sunshine.

When I was working I felt tremendously important to be so extremely busy.  Oh, the hectic life!  Don’t you wish you were like me?  Look!  Look how harried I am!  So sorry you aren’t stretched like the elastic in your grandma’s underpants. 

On any given day, I switched between making to-do lists and crossing items off again, to checking email, writing memos, running meetings, having impromptu phone consultations and just generally ping ponging around the joint.  

To a detached observer – say a white-coated lab geek with a clipboard – I might have looked like Groucho Marx in that movie where he and his brothers go in and out of doors in a common hallway, knocking skulls, creating a commotion, honking horns and meeting each other coming and going.

Thank goodness those who worked with me bought into the multi-tasking = efficient myth!  Or at least I think they did.

Now the word is out – that frenetic MO is more mentally draining and less effective than rearranging one bureaucratic piece of paperwork at a time.

In her book Overwhelmed: Work, Love,and Play When No One Has the Time, Brigid Schulte reports that today, people in the workplace say they’re too busy to do pretty much everything including eat lunch, make friends, date and sleep – they’re even too busy to have sex!

Now wait just a minute!  Some things are sacred!  When’s the last time you went without a little shut-eye?

A niece of mine is still in the workforce and moving up the ranks in her company.  She posts her corporate life on Facebook and recently mentioned that she’d had a sleepless night.  I was about to express sympathy – I used to wake up routinely at 2:36am and thrash through the agenda for my upcoming day until the alarm went off at five. 

But before I could formulate my comment, one of her friends retorted, “Sleep is for the weak!” 

There it is.  No sympathy.  Keep up or die!  Multi-taskers have the mentality of predators.  Or self-preserving prey animals that panic and leave their co-workers behind to be consumed by god-knows-what if they slow down or show vulnerability.    

Schulte cites psychologists who write of treating burned-out clients who can’t relinquish the notion that the busier you are, the more you are thought of as competent, smart, successful, admired and even envied.

But in fact, multi-tasking makes you dumber — dumber than being drunk or stoned.  Studies have shown that no two tasks done simultaneously can be done with 100 percent of one’s ability.  

It’s true – I had to quit looking at my cell phone in the car, even at a stop sign, the day I realized that each time I picked up that glorious gadget, I also relaxed my foot off the brake!

Furthermore, the distractions from too many things going on at once hamper a person’s “spam filter.”  Multi-taskers lose the ability to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information.  Put bluntly, multitasking makes you stupid.

And worse, neuroscientists have found that so much distraction shrinks your prefrontal cortex!  That’s the seat of human intelligence!  When a human being feels pressed for time and overwhelmed, that part of her brain curls into a fetal position and cries, “Mama!”

Uh oh.  You don’t suppose that’s irreversible, do you?  I mean, all those years looking smart but getting dumber?  My prefrontal cortex withering.  

Or is this just it?  Am I done with the gray matter?  Gone, gone, gone?  Like tooth enamel, irretrievable. 

All those Words with Friends to no avail.  Games on Lumosity…?  Just getting good at the games!? 

No worries.  Smaller brain, fewer demands.  And I’m pretty darn adept at the short list of tasks I approach on any given day, one-by-one, in sequence.


First I wake up and read my book.  Then I have a cup of coffee.  Next I might take a walk.  And before you know it – one minute to Wapner!

Cee Lo Green Captures My Sentiments

Norwegian Tweeters are on to something.

 The hacker group “Anonymous” hijacked a Twitter account belonging to Anders Breivik, the man behind the savage attacks earlier this month in Norway.  Disparaging tweets appeared this week made to look like Breivik himself sent them from prison; but the hackers eventually identified themselves as being part of the loosely affiliated hacker collective. 

 “This Twitter account has been seized by #NORIA@AnonymousNorway,” read a tweet.

“We want Anders to be forgotten.  Labels like ‘monster’ or ‘maniac’ won’t do either,” read another tweet.  “Media should call him pathetic; a nothing.  #Forgethim.” 

The account — which was created just days before the attacks — still exists, but all sent tweets appear to have been deleted.  The only tweet visible previously and presumably sent by Breivik, was a quote from philosopher John Stuart Mill: “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.”  

A group that undertakes protests and acts of vengeance through “hacktivism,” Anonymous announced its campaign against Breivik last week.  As part of their strategy, they posted a document titled “Operation Un-Manifest” exhorting people worldwide to re-write Breivik’s manifesto.  

Their idea is to find the manifesto online; change it, “add stupid stuff,” remove parts, do what you like to it.  Then, republish it everywhere and declare the fakes to be the original.  And, they urge readers to “have a moment” for the victims of his cruel attacks.

We all are anonymous, they say.  We all are Legion.  We do not forgive murder.  We do not forget the victims. 

“Let Anders become a joke, [so] that nobody will take him seriously anymore,” their post reads. 

Godspeed to you, Anonymous. 

Would that it could be true with the murderer Breivik, along with the likes of Casey Anthony, Scott Peterson, Jared Loughner, Charles Manson, Osama bin Laden.  Would that we could declare them each “a nothing” and forget their faces and names.   

Now we can never, should never forget what they’ve done to us.  That’s right, to us.  It wasn’t someone else’s child who died, but our child.  It wasn’t the beauty or innocence of a stranger, but our own that was assaulted.  Our own buildings fell and our planes crashed.  We were attacked.  Wherever they were, and whenever they acted, we each suffered the manifestation of their sickness of mind and blackness of thinking.  Hence our shock, anguish, and outrage. 

Yet the media are duty bound to keep us mindful of their ugly faces and despicable deeds.  I’ve just done my own small part with the list above.   

I know we must forgive if we can, remember what we cannot let go, and forget the culprits as dust, or mites, or gnats to be waved away.    

So allow me to make an August resolution:  I vow not to mention the names of the infamous again.  I will do my small part to keep the distasteful out of my mouth and off the pages I produce.  I will spare you from thinking directly of them.  I will not contribute to the notoriety or memory of a thief, a pervert, a murderer, or a terrorist. 

We’ll see how it goes, but I have a feeling that, as it should be, we can all recognize the circumstances and remember the victims not the perpetrators.  We won’t be subjected, in this column at least, to discussion of the kidnapping and rape trial of __________  ____________, but instead for example, of the trial of Jaycee Dugard’s abductor. 

I would much rather be mindful of this remarkable young woman, her spirit, and her survival than ever to hear the names or gaze upon the foul vestiges of the man and woman on trial in her case.  Let me see her face again, never theirs. 

The Norwegian mentioned above quoted John Stuart Mill in a perversion to justify his crimes.  In spite of this I believe Mill was right – one person with a strong belief has strength beyond the good intentions of 100,000.  Otherwise, why write?  Why make a resolution? 

I also sometimes rely on the words of the wise, articulate ones who’ve preceded me.  They sum up my feelings with a wealth of experience and knowledge I do not possess.  

In the case of this man, since I can’t quote singer/songwriter Cee Lo Green in a family venue, I invoke Groucho Marx, who said, “I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.”