Multitasking ....

I've had lots of people tell me that I ought to start blogging, but frankly I'm just not sure I have anything interesting enough to say! So, I thought the acid test would be to give it a try and see if people (namely you, the person hopefully reading this now) like it! 


I guess I should add here that all views are my own (unless otherwise stated) and that I'm aiming for a mix of informative posts and ramblings about life as a mummy, come secretary for my hubby, come self employed 'business' woman.

So I had the challenge of finding my first topic and as I'm sitting typing this whilst supervising my five year old's building of a Lego sea plane, with my two year old sitting on my lap/climbing on my shoulders, I thought I'd start with multitasking!

Wiki gives the definition of multitasking as:

'the best performance by an individual of appearing to handle more than one task at the same time. ... An example of multitasking is taking phone calls while typing an email.'

For me, the key word here is 'appearing'. I think I do very well at appearing to handle many tasks at once, but in reality know I'm fooling myself as inevitably I have to pause one activity or the other to finish something off properly or risk making mistakes.

Take last night for instance. Whilst talking on the phone I started to tidy the lounge and draw the curtains. It was only an hour later when my hubby came in to the lounge he asked me why only one of the curtains was drawn!

Or the other morning when, whilst trying to hold a conversation with my five year old, whilst fixing breakfast and considering what to make for his packed lunch, I poured orange juice on my cornflakes!

The most awkward result of my 'multitasking' however was the other day when, whilst driving and trying to make a mental list in my head of what I needed to do and listening to my two year old chatting away in the back seat, I turned up towards my house instead of towards my friend's to drop off a card. Before I'd thought had exclaimed 'oh bugger' which my two year old then continued to repeat for the rest of the journey. Now, every time we get to the junction, he repeats the phrase numerous times and no amount of me saying 'oh BOTHER' persuades him otherwise.

I'm just waiting for the day when my 'multitasking' gets me in to more serious trouble!

So I think I'll end this post with the words of Psychiatrist Edward M. Hallowell^* who has described multitasking as a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously as effectively as one”.

What's been your funniest/worst multitasking disaster?