Singletasking
January 27th, 2008
Author: Michael Krotscheck
Category: Articles
Tags: developer, selfmanagement, simplicity, singletask
The most telling thing about this article is that not five words into my first introduction, my Gmail reminder popup came up demanding attention, and my automated reflexes immediately clicked on the little window to see what the hopeful mailer wanted. The side effect? It completely derailed my train of thought I had to work myself back into it. QED.
I have had no small number of conversations with my boss about the nature of Work-Life balance. Today’s everyday wisdom says that you have to keep both your personal and professional life properly segregated if you want to lead a happy life, and yet work continues to raise it’s ugly head once I leave the office. Case and point: I’ve been in the office most of the weekend trying to complete some tasks that I was unable to complete during the week, and even now I’m having a hard time even thinking about them in such a way that I can complete them and finally go home. Frustrated, I flipped back over to my browser and read my RSS feeds to clear my head, an came across an article on multitasking that allowed me to frame the problem in a way that made some sense: It’s not the work-life balance that I need to deal with, it’s the work-work balance.
