Lessons in Multitasking

I have always known that I have been horrible at multi-tasking, yet, for some reason, I have always insisted on trying. 

However, last week, 2 things happened, one which positively reinforced doing only one thing at a time and another which negatively reinforced the pitfalls of multi-tasking, which were the final nails in my multi-tasking coffin.

How about I start with the positive, because, well positive is good.

While employed at Qualcomm, I would constantly try to juggle development tasks, reading email, answering instant messages, checking facebook, doing code reviews and checking more email. Attempting to do all simultaneously, led to getting none of them done satisfactorily.

Now that I am "underemployed", I still have plenty of development, email, instant messages and facebook checking on my plate, but I have a little bit more luxury to schedule them as I so please... so I ran a little experiment with only doing one at a time... and the results were amazing. I probably got more done in a 3 hour block of 100% focused development, than I would have in 3 days of the not-so-focused variety. 

And that was all the development I did for the day.

Then I moved on to checking email, and just checking email. 

Then facebook, and just facebook.

Then eating some food, and just eating some food.

Then talking to my mom on the phone, and just talking to my mom on the phone.

And then, and then and then...

But eventually, I messed up.

I tried taking a dump, while eating oatmeal, while listening to Pandora, while texting, while charging my phone.

The cable got caught on the oatmeal bowl, and down goes the ceramic bowl full of oatmeal.

I wouldn't wish cleaning up oatmeal from the floor onto my worst enemy. 

It feels like cat vomit.

Learn from my lesson, don't multitask, or you too may find yourself cleaning up oatmeal with toilet paper.