I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my tendency towards multi-tasking. I have always been someone who naturally does several things at once. I flit from here to there throughout the day, moving back and forth between projects and websites, and my mind is often on something that has nothing to do with the task at hand. Lately I’ve been wondering about the pros and cons of multitasking as it relates to my writing work.
First I have to say that there are basically three types of writing work that I do – work that I’m paid to do for clients, blogging that I do for myself and creative writing offline. I think that multitasking affects each of them differently.
Multitasking is often the most efficient thing for me to do when it comes to the work that I do for my clients. This is all ongoing work so I can create a basic schedule that allows me to move back and forth between projects to get everything done by its deadline each month. This also breaks up the monotony of some of the jobs by interspersing more interesting (or at least different) work into longer projects.
Blogging for myself is much this same way. My approach to blogging for myself tends to be that I blog when something comes to mind that I want to blog about. I head to my site, write up a quick entry and publish it. However, there are longer more researched pieces that I do sometimes as well and I’m not sure how mutli-tasking impacts them.
In regards to creative writing … I think that multi-tasking is a positive thing when it means that I have multiple projects in various stages of completion. However, I think it’s negative when I’m moving back and forth between them a lot because it prevents me from sitting through that uncomfortable stage of “figuring it out” and actually getting somewhere with my work.
What do you think? Does multi-tasking help you or hinder you in your writing process?
Does Multi-Tasking Help or Harm Writing? has 4 Comments
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April 9th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Nice post. I think that multitasking helps and hinders my writing. It depends on the moment. Some days having so many different projects going on actually paralyzes me, and other days it motivates me to get working. I have struggled with focusing on just one thing at one time because it does get dull and because I know that there are other things to do.
Multitasking is productive when I don’t feel as though I have to do more than one thing in order to finish everything. Choosing to do a little of one thing and a little of another keeps my brain active. Otherwise, if I multitask because I feel overwhelmed, I tend to shut down or burn out. Does that make sense?
@ Chesley – That makes perfect sense! I think the important thing is that we learn how to identify when multitasking is good for us and when it’s not and to act accordingly.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:30 am
This is a subject recently that nags at me. I’m finding that muti-tasking is more of a distraction than anything productive for me. I’m considering now practicing Zen meditation to learn to focus the mind one thing at a time.
Great topic!
@frootbat31 …. I’ve been interested in zen and tibetan meditations myself lately for the same reason – I’ve also been doing tons of slow yoga classes. It’s helping but I’m still trying to find a balance between this and productivity.
April 10th, 2009 at 10:43 am
I agree with you on this one. I also do various types of writing and I think multitasking can be very helpful at times, provided I don’t become distracted by too many tasks at once, in which case you get very little to nothing actually completed. Great post here. Glad I stumbled on your blog.
@ Lisa … Glad that you stumbled here as well – love the comments that you’re adding to the site!
April 13th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Sometimes multitasking works well for me, but lately I find that it doesn’t. Perhaps it’s because what I’m doing requires more focus. When I was a legal secretary, multitasking was something that was required and expected. However, teaching requires more focus. As for writing, I have to stay away from multitasking completely because I need total focus. Glad to know I’m not the only one that struggles at times with multitasking.