confessions of a multitasker....

I am a multitasker.

Or at least I pretend to be a multitasker, when really I know I do much better (and quicker) work, whatever that work might happen to be, when I sit down and devote all my concentration to one thing.

I made a list yesterday of the things I needed to get done before people started arriving at my house for a meeting...
It looked like this:

(Mulvi girls - care to guess what kind of soup I made?!?!?!)

Oh, and by the way, I am also a procrastinator.

The two things to do not go well together. Example:

It started off well. I had four and half hours to get everything done, including eat dinner which wasn't on the list. The soup had to simmer for three hours and I logically started with the soup. While I was making the soup I also put the groceries away and had that done and the dishes cleaned up (note, that wasn't part of the list) in about half an hour.

Then chaos broke out. I noticed the newspaper was begging for someone to read it. So I set the timer for 10 minutes and read the paper.

Then I thought, hmm...maybe I should get my report done and emailed off while it's all fresh in my mind. Good plan, except first I kept getting up and stirring the soup and changing the music and then seeing the laundry that needed to be folded and folding one shirt or a pair of pants and then remembering, ooops, I'm supposed to doing my report and then I hit a roadblock and needed some advice from someone else who happened to not be at home.

So, I thought, "Let's get those emails sent." I had another list of who needed an email and what information needed to be included, but I got distracted by the emails my friends sent me and reading Heddy's blog (oh, and that "Next Blog" button is a BRILLIANT way to procrastinate...in case you were wondering). And the laundry.

Then I wandered into the bathroom in search of an elastic for my not-quite-long-enough-yet, but-almost-ready-for-a-ponytail hair. And noticed the sink needed cleaning.

But I ignored the toilet and shower and mirrors...and went back to the laundry. Then I saw the boxes. And I decided I didn't have enough time to deal with them...so I moved them out of the way and in the process found a pile of filing that needed sorting. So I sorted it. Then realized that the report needed to be finished...I could finish all those parts except the one that I needed help with. And then it was only an hour before I needed to be done and the cornmeal muffins take about half an hour to mix and bake. And then there were no eggs...

Anyway, you get the idea. I got it all done...but I think if I'd stopped to do it one thing at a time, I would have had more time left to read the paper...and maybe read those emails from my friends and all that...yeah...

sigh...

That's all...time to stop procrastinating...