The Curse of the Multi-Tasker

I feel most fulfilled when I am successfully juggling many things.  I love to plan and organize, especially ahead of time.

Succeeding at multi-tasking was one of my favourite things about classroom teaching.  Sometimes I'd peek into kids' desks to get their name off of a labelled marker and make a seating chart in a classroom I was new to.  I'd go over the lesson plan and simultaneously be learning names of who sat where.  Teaching a lesson, while being on top of what 25 kids were doing felt great.  On a good day, I could whisper a redirect here, tap a shoulder there, keep track of who was in the bathroom, who would need to be caught up when they returned from extra help, sharpen a pencil, pass a kleenex, tie a shoelace, tidy the jackets, go over the next lesson in my head, hand out duotangs, and provide bits of help, all while supervising a math activity.

As a university student, I was confined to a desk, so multi-tasking came in a quieter form.  I could read a novel while following the powerpoint presentation of a lecture.  I regularly listened while doing sudoku puzzles - and even found I could listen better that way.  And I made lists.  I made lists of what homework needed to get done that day (sometimes I did one class' homework during another class' lecture), lists of groceries to be bought, lists of people to be emailed, lists of baby names, and lists of book I wanted to read.

At home, my satisfaction comes from organizing my house and family.  When I can be on the ball enough to be completely organized, know where and when everything is, have necessary items easily accessible and ready to go, prepare exactly what each person in my family needs for a certain event, have clothing washed and laid out, snacks made and packed, a change of clothes along for the newly toilet-trained one, dishes done, house tidy, emails returned, and backpacks ready for the next day, I feel proud and competent.

But sometimes it makes me sad that my brain is busy multi-processing so much at one time.  The curse of thriving on multi-tasking is that I find it nearly impossible to slow down.  It would be nice to be fully engaged in a single thing without worrying about whether the kids are behaving, about whether anyone needs to be taken to the bathroom, about whether I took the chicken out of the freezer, about whether there's a load a laundry sitting in the washer, about when I'll have time to sort through all the clothes that are too small on the kids, about when I'll get around to signing us up for that music class, about when the last time was that I vacuumed downstairs.  None of them are big things, but I would love to be able to pause the multi-tasker for a few hours here and there to just enjoy the moment in its fullness.  I love that part of me, but I also would love a break from it.