Three Hanses Together Take Time to Talk About Taking Time to...Focus.

After eons of wondering whence my modest ability to write short stories, long stories, poetry, academic papers and Russian-novel-length emails had gone, I have uncovered  (stumbled across, really) the dread cause of it all. It is the same reason that I now find it much more difficult to read long books, watch movies instead of tv shows, and study for exams. It is not, as it happens, crippling self-editing tendencies. Self-editing has become a crippling tendency of mine, in that I’ve now re-written the preceding sentence thrice, and this one twice. Still, I’m getting better. Sort of. Watch me: I’m going to leave those two sentences alone, now.

Yes, here at the beginning of the second paragraph it still seems as though the third time through, we conquered the self-editing habit. Oh. Bother. I reread the first paragraph just now, and rewrote that second sentence. And pointed it out in the sentence. Just so any confused readers are aware, there are now two distinct timelines in play—the one where I wrote about two-and-a-half paragraphs on Thursday, the 25^th of September, and the one I am writing now, on Friday, the 26^th. Timeline 3, speaking. I’m writing on Saturday, and in italics. Any readers not presently confused should just hang tight, because I’m about to mention (Thursday self is, that is) the main issue, which led to the whole thing not being done yesterday, and will almost inevitably lead to a multiplicity of timelines, and possible parallel realities. Any readers objecting to such a plan are encouraged never to a) read comic books, or b) watch films, especially films based on comic books.

Leaving it (self-editing, and multiple timelines) lightly aside, let us proceed to the true cause of my constant inconsistency. This is it: I’ve become good at multitasking. I discovered yesterday (Wednesday)—by way of a class lecture—that multitasking and single-tasking skills are inversely proportional. That is to say, as a person increases in their ability to concentrate on manifold objects and events more-or-less simultaneously, they lose the ability to concentrate on one object or event for very long at all.

This seems pretty unfair. Pretty predictable, perhaps, but pretty poor per principles of parity. That is to say, it is as though learning to juggle carried with it the danger that you (a trained juggler) couldn’t really be trusted to hold anything—a baby, for instance—for fear that you might involuntarily juggle it. This, as far as I can tell, is not the case at all. I know some jugglers (including—no jest—the president of a large association of Christian jugglers). As far as I can tell, not a single juggler I know has ever involuntarily juggled anything. In fact, I can think of only two instances wherein the juggling skills of my friends, the jugglers have ever amounted to anything resembling a real drawback. In one case, as I recall, the current president of the Christian Juggling Association juggled (intentionally, mind you) a number of machetes, and one of them ended up doing an impression of the double-bladed sword of scripture (separating flesh from bone). The impression was pretty effective, and his hand was pretty ineffective for the next couple of months. In the other case, I witnessed a friend attempting a juggling trick that involved not only a pattern of keeping balls suspended in the air, but also bouncing them off of the ground. He happened to misjudge the angle of the bounce, and was compelled by the ball to join it on the floor in a writhing heap.

Anyway, you see what I mean? It is very difficult to get anywhere if, instead of writing straightforwardly about how multitasking has ruined me for concentrating on a single task and theme, I go off on tangents about juggling injuries, and multiple timelines. What I meant by those stories, though is that the problem was not that they started involuntarily juggling their dinner plate or steering wheel or whatever, leading to disaster, it was that they made mistakes while juggling, on purpose. But apparently, this is not how mental juggling works.

 Incidentally, I’ve now written past the end of the Thursday timeline, so everything you read from here on out will be Friday. Unless I get distracted again. I did.

At any rate, I’ve started working on being able to concentrate on one thing at a time, again, so that I can do so when the moment calls for it. That is, so I can write enormous, bloated blog posts that call to mind the wretched years when those of my friends who didn’t have the necessary technical savvy to get ‘em sent straight to the Spam folder spent Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings weeping on account of the Saturday Address. Also, so I can write papers, and stuff. I just wrote a paper. Between that last sentence, and this one.

My first real step toward this was forcing myself to not read a book, browse the internet or try to write poetry while watching Thursday Night Football on CBS. I ended up multitasking, anyway; by midway through the fourth quarter, I was simultaneously watching football and snoring. Still, it was progress. Now I’m writing this, and watching football. Progress erased.

My one concern, which wasn’t really addressed in the classroom, is this: I need to be good at multitasking. Working as a restaurant server requires that I concentrate on sixty things in one minute, whereas writing, reading, and studying for exams requires that I concentrate on one thing for sixty minutes.

I have not yet done any research on the point, but I am intrigued—can I reacquire a skill at single-tasking without sacrificing my livelihood-required ability to multitask? And if not, which is better in the long run? Is it better to be able to do a bunch of little things at once—in a world where it is increasingly demanded—or to be capable of sitting down, and giving my senses, mind and emotions more time and opportunity for developing skills I already have, and developing new ones.

For instance, I don’t know how to juggle, and I’d like to learn.