By Dan Roark

It is a daily occurrence. In the picture, the mouse, the Fire Stick controller, and my cell phone are neatly placed. That was for the picture. They get moved quite a bit. With the exception of the mouse, I never put them back in the same place after using them. The mouse does, however, get moved on occasion, but it basically stays on the mouse pad. However, it’s a big mouse pad and the remote will fit there as well. So I am constantly grabbing the wrong thing for what I want to do.

I want to change shows for background noise and find I’m trying to do it with the mouse. Then I go to do something on the computer screen and grab the Fire Stick remote. Or the phone rings and it takes me a minute to figure out what to reach for.

I’m usually lost in my thoughts so I get confused easily with sudden reality. Like suddenly realizing I’m trying to use the mouse to change the channel. Or trying to click on something on my laptop with the remote.

I move each of them to different places on the desk. But that doesn’t freaking help. It just pisses me off more when I still grab the wrong one. It’s acerbated by the fact that I change the channel less frequently. Followed by my phone which I only check when getting certain notifications or a call from someone I want to talk to enough to answer it – I get some notifications on my watch, but I check them on the phone.

So far I lack any viable solution. I’m not sure at this point that there is one. But it illustrates that multi-tasking is a fallacy. You can only truly do one task at a time. If you try to alternate between several tasks, you never do any of them as well as you can one at a time. And it takes longer to complete each task.

Most importantly, it makes my damn head hurt changing from task to task. I can think about a few things at the same time, yet I can only act on one at a time. That still doesn’t keep me from thinking about a task I’m not working on – making me switch again. Which is why it makes my head hurt. At that point, calming down and thinking of nothing is an impossibility.

So I simply grab my mouse and try to change channels.

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Keep writing the songs that are in your heart.

Peace be with you.

Paypal.me/danroark