Right before my adult life began, I started to hear about this thing called multitasking.

It was offered by the people in charge of saddling us with the truth about everything that the ability to multitask was requisite for success, achievement and maintaining a general outward appearance of awesomeness as one walked, chewed gum, fixed their eyeliner, texted their friend about what someone said yesterday, and solved a Calculus problem all while driving to the grocery store.

And, now, apparently, that was all sorts of wrong.

Efficiency experts are now saying that while you can do several things at once, you cannot do several important things well at the same time.  This has, of course, created a deep sense of concern in me at this very moment because I’m typing up this blog post while trying to get the kids to go to sleep.  Interestingly, the kids are still awake, and this post is turning out to be a lot less clever than I thought it would.

Maybe those efficiency experts are on to something.

I would really like to shadow an “efficiency expert” for a day.  I don’t think I could handle a job like that, though, because I have trouble compartmentalizing.  In other words, no matter what I’m doing, everything I am is coming with me.

If I were an efficiency expert, I would feel like a total hypocrite if everything I did wasn’t totally efficient.  Like, everything.

Where is the most efficient place for this toothbrush?

How much shampoo do I need to use in order to complete the most efficient iteration of washing my hair?

Should I take a shower before I use the toilet or after?  Okay, that’s a no brainer… before. 

Before.

But back to multitasking.  I like this idea that multitasking is a myth, and I’m sort of working out in my brain the relationship between technology and how our propensity to engage in multitasking has been significantly impacted by it.  Okay, fine, it’s in my brain because I read this article, but I guarantee you that sooner or later I would have come up with that relationship all by myself.

Thinking about the impact of technology on unchecked multitasking (if you didn’t read the article, think talking on your cell phone, with your laptop open to Facebook, Twitter, a blog post, e-mail, and, oh, yeah, the job you actually get PAID to do), it started to feel inescapable.  Are we just going to be a civilization who does things only slightly well because we’re all too busy doing so many things?

We seem to be propagating this idea that we can be really great at every single little thing we decide to put our minds to, and, as a result, most of the stuff we produce seems to be a whole lot less than really great and quite often doesn’t even begin to touch the realm of “kind of” great.

Not everybody is Leonardo DaVinci, you know, drafting up schematics to flying machines in between painting the Mona Lisa and being the subject of one of the most overrated and slightly offensive mystery novel series of all time.

No, most of us are probably… Van Gogh.

The guy was a painter.  He painted and he drew.  That’s all he did.  He tried to become a preacher man in the beginning of his life, but, even then, he was roaming the countryside sketching people.  Most likely, and I may be projecting here, but he was telling himself that he could be more than one thing… do more than one thing.  But, in the end, he was a painter.  He painted.  And, then, he killed himself, but that’s not important.

Incidentally, you probably know that nobody cared much about Van Gogh when he was alive.

Now he’s the father of modern art and all, but back then, nobody cared about Van Gogh.

He was just some painter.