Watching a man spin plates was one of the coolest things I have ever seen on stage. The man had these poles mounted to the stage and frantic music played while he moved quickly with a stack of plates from one pole to another and started spinning each plate.
The spectacle was a chaotic frenzy and I was a 12 year old who loved watching it. sometimes at work and at home we may feel like this man. There is even a name for it.. Multi tasking, this is not sustainable. I have said it before and I will say it again life and career are infinite games.
The man can spin the plates because there is an end to this. You cannot multitask because there will never be an end. This article details how one should focus on deep work as opposed to multi tasking. Basically deep work is focusing on one task at a time and eliminating the task.
There are many facets to life and work and no matter what we think we cannot focus on multiple things at once it is impossible. This article titled the myth of multi tasking goes over why multitasking doesn’t work and seems to be the source of long term damage.
For me it seems that multitasking takes away the moment and the importance of it. When we are concerned with the plates on the left right and center we can often overlook the moment we are in and that is a bad thing. Before you loose touch and start multitasking take a breath an live in this moment.
The Corrigan Encore 