As tends to happen to me on a regular basis, I find myself right now in the middle of a good half-dozen creative projects all at the same time. If you add in all the daily chores around the house and the sundry projects for church and school, it's quite likely that I've got somewhere on the order of fifteen things going at once. And, like all good demands on my time, they're all completely vital, completely important, and all completely adamant that they should be done first.
I'm sure you've all found yourselves in a similar situation. The question then becomes, how am I going to get all of this done in time? And, of course, the logical answer is: multitasking. Right?
Multitasking has taken on ever greater importance in our society, and I'm sorry to say that I have never found multitasking to be the way to get many projects done well and quickly. Indeed, anyone I've ever seen who claims to be good at multitasking always seems frazzled, at the end of his rope, and tends to have poor-quality results.
In my own life, whenever I try to multitask, I end up accomplishing a whole lot of nothing, and end up not actually finishing anything. In fact, about the closest I can ever get to multitasking is working on one project for five minutes before hopping to the next for another ten, then to a third for a couple of minutes. I get a lot of little things done, but it's all very shallow. In order to go deep on a project, it takes time, and multitasking just doesn't allow that amount of focused time.
Case in point: at one of my student's piano lessons this week, the student told me that every time she sat down to practice, she worked on every piece I'd assigned her for the week. Now, I tend to assign five or six pieces to this student, all of them of various lengths and difficulties. That means she probably worked on a given piece for no more than four or five minutes at a time. What tends to happen in a case like this is the pieces come back, and none of them are worse than they were the week before, but most of them are no better.
Instead, I told her to sit down to practice and pick only two pieces, and to work on those two only for the entire 30 or 45 minutes she practiced. The next time she sat down, she should pick two different pieces. In this way, she'll still practice all of her pieces (and probably for about the same amount of time), but she'll go deeper on each piece when she plays it, and ought to get to know it better. We'll see next week if I'm right.
In my own creative life, I do the same thing. Yes, I have three composing projects I'm in the middle of right now, plus one book I'm trying to self-publish, another I'm trying to proofread, not to mention all the things I need to get done for school, for church, and for the Raleigh Ringers concert in June. I could spend five minutes on each of these things, and in the end, wind up with a whole lot of nothing to show for it. Or, I could pick one project and work on it for the next two hours. Then, the next time I sit down to work, I pick a different project and work on it for two hours. I'll get much better work done than I will by flitting from thing to thing, and by the time all is said and done, all the projects will be finished.
The next time you find yourself hopping from project to project, ask yourself if you're really doing your best work this way. Instead, try focusing on one project, even if it's just for an hour, before moving on to the next. Try things that way for long enough, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with the results.
No comments:
Post a Comment