Multitasking Habit: Is It Worth?

They are fools that try many tasks alone, and they are masters that get teams on the move, for their knowledge is multifarious and have a pledge to redeem with time

Multitasking is a misnomer; there is no such thing as that. No humans can do more than one job at a time. Any task requires a minimum time, an appropriate mental temper oriented to the job, adequate capabilities to reason out the pros and cons and above all relevant knowledge of the job requirements. No job gets done; let alone done well, without realizing this.

Multitasking is, attempting to do more than one task at a given time. It might seem like the tight rope walker juggling his pins while he walks the tight rope which the spectators see as multitasking, not realizing that it happens to be a single task he has been trained to.

Human life has always been a tight rope walk; it has been that of endeavouring into unknown spaces of environment beating time, and taking that ever unsure step to win over elements, but never alone. It has been an effort of groups with a common purpose. Great winners have been able to realize this factor of existence and victory. Some have gone alone but put their concerted effort into one task and won on their own, while others that put in efforts to various tasks with the help of others have won too. But people who try multitasking by themselves can never complete their tasks on time, as they think they can.

Human mental acumen is built to concentrate. Humans that do not use this acumen, end up being laggards and failures. One man on a single task with a specific time will be able to concentrate, but with more than one for the specific time spells doom. Such people are only on a compulsion to multitasking to create impressions and seek attention with selfish motives. There are people that are ambidextrous, those that are comfortable using both their hands for normal daily life activities. Given two different tasks to be performed at the same time they fail miserably. Some build up a skill to do two different practised activities and anything else is out of the question. They are only exhibiting what they have practised over time just as the tight rope walker with the juggling pins; it is only voluntary, practised exhibitionism, to impress for accolades.

In everyday life, no one individual can do two tasks at the same time. Housewives are deemed to be multitaskers; no they are not. When the pot is put to boil there is a specific time until it comes to the boil, which they know by practice; it is that time that they use for other activities. They can be termed “smart workers” for they do not waste or let go of available time. There are “smart managers” who assign a task to others and use the meantime to go about other tasks; they are not multitasking. They may be able to get multiple tasks done within a specific time, but they are not multitasking, they are doing a job – a single task- that they are paid for- to get things done and to take responsibility of fallouts.

So multitasking is only possible only if there are groups performing different jobs at the same time under one person and then we cannot judge that person to be “multitasking”

Multitasking, all alone, will end with no completed job on time, exhaustion, depleted energy, lack of sleep and sleeping out nightmares with no fresh day to wake up to; so is it worth the trouble?