Doing Two Things at a Time

Some people tend to thing that they can only do one thing at a time. But with good calculation and estimation, we can do more than one thing at a time. In this article we will learn on how to manage yourself with many things but with a limited time.

This is something that should be handled very carefully. In fact it is in all senses a balancing act. It may very well for domestic things, but in your professional life, if you are not careful while balancing, you could end up flat on your nose.

Lets take an example. At home I want to iron my clothes and it takes a couple of minutes for my electric iron to heat up. At the same time I want to make myself a cup of coffee so while the iron is heating up, I might as well put the coffee maker on the stove. I need to make some toast for my breakfast and after popping two slices of bread into the toaster; I can go back to the ironing.

After ironing one shirt perhaps, I can take the boiling coffee off the stove and remove the pieces of toast from the toaster. And at the end of five minutes, I have my coffee, two slices of toast and a freshly ironed shirt. But if I am not careful, I could end up with two pieces of burnt bread, coffee that has boiled over and spilled all over the stove and probably a singed shirt.

There is too much balancing of actions involved here and it could get you quite worked up. I would suggest that if you feel that you can do more than one thing at a time, go ahead but limit the number to two or else you might end up messing a whole lot of things. There are a lot of people who read their newspapers in the loo. Well, I have my reservations about that, but if it saves time for them, well and good.

Let us now check out a couple of things which can be done simultaneously at the office. In todays hectic world, where is so much fret and fury, most of us hardly get any exercise. And since we are so busted for time, the question of taking time off to get some exercise seems completely out of question.

I think it would be a good idea to try and get some exercise while you are in the office itself. When you are making a couple of telephone calls together, it would be a good idea to get up and walk up and down. If you have to sit down, stretch out your feet and try to wiggle your toes. This exercise has been proved to be a great stress reliever.

If you have a cell phone, try and get one of those hand free sets which you can attach to your body so that your hands are free while you are talking. This gives you a chance to do something useful with your hands instead of just supporting a hand set.

The essence of this lesson is that if you choose to do two things at the same time make sure that one of those things is not very important and does not require much attention. Otherwise, what will happen is that by dividing your attention to both those things, you might end up with two half baked pies, i.e. two finished tasks that are in no way complete.

The human brain is a remarkable thing, there is no denying that. And some of the luckier ones have better brains than others. But all the same, trying to focus your attention on two important things at the same time, is really asking for too much.