I've known that stuff for years, heard student speeches about it while teaching, and suffered through three years of dissertating, which was the hardest, most straight up depressing thing I've ever done where I was buffeted constantly with self-doubt, procrastination, and discouragement. And despite all that, all that stop-multitasking stuff didn't really feel like it was relevant to me.
And then suddenly, here in London, it does. I feel like so often I sit down at the desk to do all the work I need to do-- and it doesn't feel more difficult or overwhelming or just more than my workload elsewhere, as a PhD student or a Midorikaisei. But I tend to sit down these days at the computer and start an email, then get distracted by some other thing I need to finish asap, then remember some thing I've been thinking about ordering online, then a new email comes in, and so on and so on.
That feeling even comes up lately when I'm planning to do some kind of leisure activity-- I am actually paralyzed by all the choices of things I want to do and can do and end up sort of wavering between them all, doing none of them-- like a kid in the midst of a wondrous candy shop who wants all the things so much that she can't choose one to grab first.
Part of the paralysis comes from knowing that if I don't somehow capture the thoughts that flit through my head they have a good chance of disappearing. And some of them, I know, I can't afford to let disappear. I've been employing a variety of thought-capture mechanisms: the trusty more-than-half-my-life-now journal, the paper calendar, the google calendar, the smart phone, Evernote program that syncs across my phone, home computer, and school computer, a book of notes and lists I started, loose paper lists...
But even this-- I mean, obviously that's too many methods of keeping my thoughts in order. Who'll order my ordering mechanisms?
I've been fighting lately to keep from getting too distracted. I tell myself again and again, okay, do this thing, and THEN do the next thing. I think one major thing that's changed is that as a lecturer I am teaching more than one class, and am dealing with new types of administration duties... not that many, not as many as most of the more senior and more permanent folks than me. But I'm also now trying to take care of finances on two continents, two apartments on two continents, and three classes (up from two last semester), my own research and professional things like job applications and conferences, and having a social life both in London and for all you loved ones farther afield, and a creative life. We are all dealing with a large number of things like that. I know I'm not particularly special.
I was realizing that one difficult thing about not multitasking is I become aware of just how long all the individual tasks that make up my work and even my leisure take. I know from all those studies and articles that the tasks will take more cumulative time if I'm doing three at once, but on the other hand, it is HORRIFYING to realize one has spent three hours JUST searching airfares, or compiling a class reading list, or 45 minutes reading and writing feedback for one paper, or compiling an email to a class. I'm realizing that those little, niggly, annoying, endless tasks on my to do list-- there's a reason why certain ones that are important and seem small just get skipped and skipped and skipped-- every little thing takes time. Here I am on the time thing again. Every thing I do takes time, and when I do one at a time, even if that will reduce the overall amount of time it will require, it could be because those minutes, that commitment snaps into focus.
Blog posts take time. I have a million ideas of things I want to write up. I have a million barely started drafts of posts. But they take time, and unfortunately I write and think and type for a living so much already that it can be hard to do more of that in the leisure that is my time to update these things. Doing something well takes time. And with writing, the writing turns it into something else as it unfolds, and making something, learning where I end up going-- that takes time.
And I want to go every place. I'm back in the middle of that candy store, agonized, unable to choose which one to go for first-- because it will take time. I'm standing in the middle of the map, dying to step out in every direction at once.
In the case of London, I mean this totally literally-- I actually bought a map so I can label all the places I want to go and things I want to do on it. That way I can try to organize my trips-- if I go north, maybe I can do a couple of the northerly things on my list. Or west, or whathaveyou. A few times already I've been a little (or a lot) overambitious-- pedestrians really can't actually go out and go antiques shopping AND to a farmer's market AND to a book fair, because you can't carry all that home! And most of these things are optional-- even little home improvements and so on are optional-- so many days I've realized I have time, and then agonized-- go east? Go west? Go OUT to do some work? Stay IN to work? The last few weeks, feeling skint, I kept feeling that I should go out and appreciate the amazing fact that I live in London and do something cool, but then realized I could stay home and work for free. I can have fun at home for free, I can do a lot of things here, and the things I think of doing or buying are all really optional at this point.
I am really in love with this great world and there are so many innumerable things worth thinking and doing and remembering and otherwise capturing. And there are innumerable little things I need to get done too. But they all swirl around me in a chaos of possibility and necessity. I'm capturing them in all the ways I can devise to capture them but still I long for the ones I missed too. I just have to take time.
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