jill of all arts

is it really still monday?  wow, it's been a long day!

i had an epiphany this week, reading a humor book by a.j. jacobs called, "the guinea pig diaries: my life as an experiment".  i'm withholding judgment on the book until i finish it (a.j. has a tendency to toe the line of propriety at times) so don't go out and buy it and blame me when it gets edgy.

anyhoo, his first experiment is called "the unitasker," which is only a little more awful than it sounds.  a whole nightmare-ish month with no multi-tasking.  no reading while eating, no listening to the radio in the shower, no (gulp) stalking facebook while working, no music during homework, no talking on the phone while cleaning/driving/emailing/you name it.
zip.
zilch.
nadda.
... hellish.

and then he starts spouting a bunch of statistics about multi-tasking: the human brain functions poorly while multi-tasking, multi-tasking shortcircuits the pathway from short-term memory to long-term memory, a whole flipping lot of studies have proved that multi-tasking makes us dumber, etc, etc, etc.

so, faced with an ever growing, barely shrinking pile of projects that, no matter how much time i spend on them, never seem to show progress, i'm taking the uni-tasking plunge.

let me rephrase that.  i'm gingerly toeing the uni-tasking puddle.  i will still listen to podcasts while cooking and read on my lunch break.  i will still play my "treadmill" playlist at the gym and brew coffee while helping customers at starbucks.  but, for one week, i will not listen to music, click on firefox, or tidy my desk while working on projects.  i will not listen to the radio or check my email while driving.  (don't look at me like that.  texting is illegal.  checking email is perfectly legal ... i think.)

i am writing this whole blog in one sitting, and i am not going to stand up until it's done.  not even to glance at the very loud cat fight right outside my window.  (i've allowed myself to nervously dart my eyes around the room as part of the detox, but that's it.)

my whole uni-tasking thing was going great until joel called me to the living room a couple minutes ago to show me the beautiful sunset.  failure.

maybe that kind of failure's ok, though.  i'll keep y'all updated. ;)