Tossed about
Multitasking is indeed a useful technique, but it is only effective if one knows how to use it effectively. A famous saying in Chinese, ‘water can float your boat but can also capsize it’ (水能載舟，也能覆舟). The same technique (here time management in the form of doing multiple things concurrently) can help you reach high levels of productivity but it can also impede you if it is somehow misused or not used to the best effect. The key to effective multitasking is tenacity and persistence, which are crucial in propelling you forward so that you do not lose momentum. There are (many) times, however, that we get bogged down in a particular task at hand and we simply feel that we cannot go on doing it anymore. At moments like this, one needs to stop since one is simply wasting time and energy if one feels totally saturated. In dealing with saturation, it is tempting to take a break by resting. In a multitasking mode, however, one should take a break by doing something else, perhaps no less important or urgent than the present task. This is a crucial difference, and it is indeed painful to keep on working, especially when the current task has drained so much energy out of you, but doing something else may be not as bad as it sounds as tackling a (wholly) different task could refresh one’s system and re-energise you.
One effect of this mode of extreme multi-tasking is that it leaves one constantly restless, as one is essentially constantly moving, which may or may not be a bad thing. The pros and cons are obvious: as one never stands still and is constantly on the move, one is always making progress in one’s numerous tasks and various domains of work, but if one does not ever rest, one may exhaust one’s system and do irreparable damage to oneself. An appropriate metaphor could be a ship sailing in a stormy sea where it is tossed about by choppy waves. In order to do multitask effectively, one needs to strike a balance between switching between tasks and doing one’s tasks at hand properly, since one can hardly make much progress in anything if one is constantly thinking about other things and does not buckle down on just one thing at a time. There is hence inherent paradox in multitasking, as one needs to focus on one task at a time while seeking to switch tasks in order to buy time for oneself.
It sounds crazy but it may be a valid way of achieving peak productivity. There is an ancient philosophical tradition that states that the paradox of life is such that life and death are closely intertwined and one cannot be achieved without the other. This is obvious enough for death which presupposes life since how could death occur if there was no living being in the first place? The other side of the argument that life is entailed by death and destruction is much less obvious but much more powerful, as it seems that it is through destruction and demise that construction of the new occurs, and by tearing down pre-existing structures one can build something new. This is a much more toilsome process but one that holds true, methinks. One cannot achieve anything new (and good) if one sticks with what one has and is not willing to try something else. Time to get going.
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Originally published at http://keithtselinguist.wordpress.com on January 3, 2024.
