Here’s a typical article of the many I’ve seen  of this year about multitasking being bad.

And I don’t argue with the main points. If I were a writer, blogger, coder, analyst, tax preparer, etc. I would agree completely.

In fact, in my past jobs where I work, I’ve been a big fan of single-tasking. I was a business analyst for a year and it was heaven to have uninterrupted hours where I could pull together my data, build my pivot tables, validate my data, write my analysis. I could focus and pay attention to what I was doing.

I still had my email open and my instant messaging window open (requirements at work), but I didn’t get that much traffic.

Before that, doing dedicated support I could still focus for periods of time. I worked one email or one request at a time. Instant messaging was useful to ask quick questions, but there weren’t that many. Sure, I probably did some fun chatting with friends at work but it was usually between requests.

I make it sound ideal, and there was probably more multitasking going on than I let on. The primary reason is that many tools take time to log into or to bring up the next screen and I am very likely to squeeze in something else while I’m waiting for that.

I know that right now I spend my days multitasking just about every minute of the day. And I try to figure out why so I can figure out what I can change.

Some of it is indeed that pulling up a new website, clicking through the 3 screens of a tool where I’m submitting something where each screen can take a minute or two to come up, or waiting for someone who wants to ask me a question who then takes 3 or 4 minutes to figure out what their question is, leaves large gaps of time that I feel I should be doing something. (Because I never get it all done at work these days.)

On a larger scale, much of what I do is along the lines of mind-reading, and since I’m not good at that it really turns into a short Q&A session, where I guess at the 3 possible things this user’s cryptic comment could mean, then reply to their email with the possibilities and some questions to help narrow it down so I can actually understand what their issue or request is. This means I then have to wait for their response.

Or I have to pull together the data to be changed and then send that off to the technical team to actually run the scripts to make that change. So I have a lot of things I track in a todo list so I can remember what the next step is when it gets back. That kind of things turns my day into a series of short tasks, 3 to 10 minutes in duration, so by the end of the day I haven’t so much multitasked as just singletasked 50 to 80 times.

The primary impediment to singletasking at work is the instant messages from end users. I am still struggling to figure out how to get the message out that a request to our mailbox can’t be finished in an hour. Some of them take 2 or 3 days. So users send another email which takes up more of our time to sweep through the inbox, figure out where the current request is sitting, and then figure out how to reply (or ignore if we’re going to respond to the original request soon anyway) the request for an update. And if they are really in a hurry (and really, no one sends us a request until it’s urgent and important and critical, and the business is going to fail if their specific request isn’t finished in an hour) they will instant message me or my coworker and spend 20 minutes in short bursts telling us why we should drop everything else we’re doing and go work on their request.

What I’ve tried to do there is coordinate with my coworker so one of us can go on Do Not Disturb (work doesn’t like us to not be online at all). When I’m on DND, Bobby gets my pings plus his own. Not that they reroute, but that people know to go to him if they can’t get to me. Here’s where I work very hard to protect the rest of the team so people don’t see their names and start pinging them. I try to limit it to Bobby and me. I’d love to get rid of it altogether, but that would be a huge culture shift at work.

But with two mailboxes to monitor (mine gets about 60 emails a day, the tool support mailbox gets over 100 a day), plus actual support work and data verification and analysis, plus the instant messages, and the fact that we need a few more people (ok, a lot more people) working on our support team, reality is just that we have to keep a few balls in the air all the time.

Every time I see an article like the one above I pass it on to Anthony. He truly needs to get better at singletasking and the suggestions and advice in these emails make sense for him. Then we talk briefly about why it wouldn’t work for my situation. And then I go to work and it’s like a firehose turned on, until I walk away from it at the end of the day. No wonder I’m tired.

Trying to define how I felt yesterday I came up with lassitude and looked it up to see if I was right. It fits.

But of course I had to then click on Languor, which led to Lethargy which led to the synonym discussion below.

lethargy, languor, lassitude, stupor, torpor mean physical or mental inertness. lethargy implies such drowsiness or aversion to activity as is induced by disease, injury, or drugs <months of lethargy followed my accident>. languor suggests inertia induced by an enervating climate or illness or love <languor induced by a tropical vacation>. lassitude stresses listlessness or indifference resulting from fatigue or poor health <a depression marked by lassitude>

Just so you have the vocabulary.

Then today, while reading further in the biography of Amy Carmichael, A Chance to Die by Elisabeth Elliot, I ran across a few things. First up is Mathew Arnold’s tribute to his father in Rugby Chapel, found on page 225.

Hm… no languor or weariness.  I’m not up to that, obviously.

In the chapter before that Amy wrote this prayer-poem (p 221)

A tad convicting and a good reminder for someone feeling a bit like a clod this week.

This morning I received a call from another woman in my denomination. Not someone I’m very close to, but we do get along well and share values and traits. She asked how I was doing and I forgot to give the usual response   I gave a fairly honest answer that work has me stressed these days and I’m tired. She shared such encouraging words with me and prayed for me (and both of us) before we ended the call. God is surrounding me, and I’m trying to listen and live out the truth.

Well, this post doesn’t seem to be very organized, and the points that were brought home to me today may not be clear to anyone else reading this. But my God is good and faithful and that is the important part.

Night before last I had a wild dream (not that uncommon for me).

Monday was a very stressful day at work, and I worked straight from 9am to 10:30 pm so it took me awhile to decompress and get to sleep. Then, early in the morning I had some dream where I was part of a really really long table in a huge room like a cathedral. We were part of some service and I had to ring some bells and read some lesson.

Except that the bells were shaped really weird and I had about 8 of them, some really long and others really small, none that looked like any handbells I’ve used, more like flutes you shake . Plus I had some reed instrument. And I had never played them before so I was going to be totally sight-reading this. I was given my bells so I laid them out in order and then we left them to go to a back area and sit until our turn to perform. Then I had this great idea that I should get a photo of this set up, so I slipped back down the side to get my photo with my phone. Only first I picked up the wrong phone and the power button just kept giving me a screen of a Christmas tree or something.  Anyway, I get in place to take my photo and there are some tourists (Japanese, not sure why) in my way. I get a few fuzzy photos and one photo of nothing at all since I tripped. Then the tourists start touching the bells and by time they finish all my bells are in a pile.

Next I start worrying about this little lesson I’m supposed to read. I haven’t been given anything to read. Someone tells me I will be able to just wing it, but I don’t even know what verse or topic or anything. Then I notice they are putting huge books (I mean 2 feet by 3 feet by 1 foot deep) on the tables so maybe one of them has what I need. But I don’t have the program/bulletin showing my lesson details so I don’t know which big book to look in.

It was all rather stressful but I was actually being pretty calm about it all. Just aware that I had some concerns.

I was happy to wake up. Not sure what it all means but if it was reflecting my stress and concern about issues at work, then I think I’d rather be playing those bells and making up that lesson

This morning I dreamed I was with Anthony in some different house with curtains that raised and through the bottom part of our windows we could see a horse walk by and then a few other people and Anthony kept asking why Spencer was out there. (That part didn’t make any more sense in the dream than it does here.)

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I’m reading Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges and found this quote by John Newton:

…if every event, great and small, is under the direction of his providence and purpose; and if he has a wise, holy, and gracious end in view, to which everything that happens is subordinate and subservient; – then we have nothing to do, but with patience and humility to follow as he leads, and cheerfully to expect a happy issue…

It’s actually part of a much longer quote from a letter he wrote. It’s all just as convicting and encouraging as that snippet shows.

Scenario one – get all worked up to make the call, think through what I want to say and what they might say. Person answers and I spend the whole call trying not to take too much of their time and then wondering if it sounded more like I just didn’t want to be on the phone with them.

Scenario two – get all worked up, and then have to leave a message. Which means they will (hopefully) call me back and I will likely not be at all ready for the conversation so I’ll self-obsess while I stumble through it.  Or they won’t call me back and I’ll stress over how long to wait before I call them again.

I much prefer email – I know they can read it and reply on their time, and then I can read and follow up on my time.

Sure, we’re losing some connection by not being willing to pick up the phone, but everyone is so busy all the time that it always feels like an imposition. There are very few people I feel comfortable just relaxing and chatting away with on the phone.

But, I made my 2 calls today and I made 1 last week. Of those 3, 2 got converted into an email conversation, 1 will call me back (I have to stay ready

Time to talk about something other than my reading. I have been doing a mental recap of what we have been so busy doing this year.

The year started out fairly quiet and I got a ton of reading done. It made up for the very small bit of reading I actually did the last part of 2011 (what with the security audit at work and the holidays and stuff).

In January I did get to have lunch and a pedicure with my friend Jill, our Christmas gift to each other. I also had two circle meetings and helped take down the Christmas decorations. I got to visit at Edie’s house and have sushi with Val and dinner with Dot and Larry.  And, very importantly, we mailed off our passport renewal packages!

Two rather big events in January included buying a new washing machine, and having 4 friends from High School (plus little Sterling) come visit. We had a great time catching up and Anthony made lunch for us. It is hard to get us together, but it is wonderful when we pull it off.

February started with a visit to Aunt Elaine and Don (and the arrival of our new passports!). Don was playing with a friend at Monkeez Brew in Thomasville which was fun. Elaine was getting ready for hip surgery so we did some rearranging of furniture to make sure she had room to get around while she recovered. This was the month that my sister-in-law Christine started coming up each Tuesday to visit. She is rehearsing with a band in the neighborhood next to hours, so we get to see just about every week. It’s great keeping up with each other and having time to just chat. We also drove to Columbia, SC, to listen to RC Sproul speak, and then to Gastonia for a Women’s Ministries and Elder/Deacon seminars. Being in Gastonia gave us a chance to visit with Aunt Anne. I have good family. Then Mom dropped by for a fun visit, so I saw all 3 sisters that month.

In March Edie and Chris came for dinner – what fun! I had brunch with 3 classmates from my EMBA a few years ago. Then we drove down to Florida for the Ligonier National Conference and visiting with Aunt Jessie and Uncle George. We also got to visit with Pastor Bob on the way home. (Thanks Mom for house/cat sitting!) After we got back, we had lunch with the Hodge family – as much fun as expected. We ended the month with a (sort of) surprise birthday party for Bill and a trip to Ikea with Aunt Elaine and Don (she’s getting around really well after the hip surgery, ready for the other one now).

April has already been fun and we’re only half way through. All of the Easter events of course. For the first year in awhile Mom didn’t make it down for Easter, but I’m hoping we see her next month. Dot and I worked up a solo for the Sunday after Easter and I got to do some spontaneous sight-reading in a duet with Larry one night – what fun. Anthony finally finished his part of our taxes. We traveled to Bonclarken for a Women’s Ministries meeting and presented to them about using technology, websites, and social media. Then the monthly deacon meeting, and two fun Circle meetings.

Last night I had my regular visit with Christine, then we ate sushi with Val again and got to see her new house. No wonder she was so excited about it, what a wonderful house. I’m heading there again in May to help do some more fixing, moving, and settling. Tonight we were going to go to the Davidson concert, but it turned into a dinner with a friend.

Some weeks it seems we have a lot going on, but I wouldn’t trade any of it. I love the time we are able to spend with family and friends!