Fearless Exploration of the Void

Synopsis: Only through fearless exploration of the void can we come to terms with and work with the monsters of our own creation

A few weeks back I wrote an article on busyness, and got an interesting comment from my friend Karen. You can read the whole comment on the blog post page.

Here’s the part we’ll have a look at today:

I think sometimes people get jazzed by multi tasking or get warm fuzzies from accomplishing lots of “stuff”. Do you think people’s “Busyness” is yet another attempt to fill that endless “hole” without doing the hard work of being alone with the emptiness and/or having conflicts and discussions that need to happen to resolve the hard things? I think busyness may be an addiction like booze or chocolate, or at least a terrific distraction from really thinking about one’s life and doing anything meaningful about changing it.

I think so many people are stuck in this rut that I hope you will write more on this subject.

Well, you betcha.

Let’s look of one side of this–a part that was not mentioned, then get to the issues raised.

Busyness is encouraged by… wait for it… busIness. I suspect that corporate execs worldwide fairly peed themselves when the whole multi-tasking thing arose.

“Oh boy! Double the output from the same workforce! Let’s do seminars!”

I spent a long 10 months back in 1978 working for an insurance company, in the “Human Systems” department. 1984–speak for “efficiency experts.” They called us “analysts,” and our job was to go in and watch people fill out, say, “Form 101.” We wrote down every action, measured how far the person reached for a pen, for paper, etc., then added it all together, and figured out, from a huge book, how much time, statistically, filling out “Form 101″ ought to take.

We looked for ways to shorten the fill-in time, which in many cases amounted to stuff like moving the stack of papers closer.

The people being observed were never middle management and up. They were clerical workers, and they hated it when we showed up.

I got let go because I spent a lot of my free time in my departments, getting great results by finding ways to eliminate tasks the workers hated. My boss said, “We’re interested in what’s best for the company, not for the workers. Your priorities are backward.”

I was glad to leave, as the work seemed de-humanizing.

I left ahead of the great “multi-taking” push. I’m sure it was adopted whole-heartedly by that company. I’m sure they hired ambidextrous clerks, and tried to get them to fill out two forms at once.

OK, anyway… the take-away here is that multi-tasking is a lie. Try it. You can’t do two things at the same time and give both your full attention. What you can do is get good at flipping rapidly between two tasks, giving the illusion you are doing two things at once. Both things suffer from the shifting.

OK, so that’s my anti-multi-tasking screed. Back to the points raised in the comment.