Time Management

Multi-tasking is a myth! Let me tell you why. A common activity during my facilitation sessions would be a juggling activity. I would ask the students to juggle a tennis ball or some pens. You can try It for yourself (oh well getting 2 going was tough enough!). Once you manage to get 3 balls moving in succession, please ponder over the following question:

Man Juggling!

Is juggling considered to be multi-tasking?

Well some would say no. Its only juggling; hence a single activity. Well there are partially right. But not quite there yet. During juggling, the eyes have to watch, the hands have to coordinate; one hand has to throw and the other hand has to catch. That’s quite a handful! Well, the definition of multi-tasking is not what I am after, but rather the concept that one can do several things at the same time. Well truth is if one slows down time, using a special camera of some sort, you will actually notice that all tasks are serial in nature. The left hand throws the ball. The eye looks. Then the right hand gets ready to catch the 1st ball. Then the 2nd ball is thrown from the left hand. The eye looks. Then the right hand catches the ball and so on.

Hence, in my humble view, this is still a serial activity. Your mind is still focused on 1 activity at any instance of time.

What is multi-tasking then? There is no way your mind can be focused on 2 things at the same time. Hence, even the so called “multi-tasking” can only be a serial activity; at best doing multiple tasks in a serial manner, albeit with some interweaving. Then how about out digestive processes, blah blah. Ha! Now i got you! No my child, those activities do not require your attention or your mind to be involved. Those are involuntary natural processes! Of course you could be talking on the phone and driving at the same time. But my point is that your attention will have to oscillate rapidly between the driving and the talking and that is precisely why one should not be using a phone while they are driving.

Thus,it becomes crystal clear that the well acclaimed term multi-tasking is just a myth for humans!

So why as an educator am i talking so much about this? One of the primary distractions students face in recent times is without doubt the cellphone.

Photo from (http://itblibrary.blogspot.com/2019/01/happy-weekend.html)

Having established that multi-tasking is impossible, one ought to understand that every time you keep your phone beside or your junior keeps the phone beside him/herself and embarks on studying, it will always be a half-baked activity. Whenever there is a notification, your mind disengages from your work. You end up losing time. Then to re-engage your mind in your work again takes time. You end up losing time again. And these processes continue in a loop (notification after notification). At the end you proclaim, " I just don't have enough time to finish my work; 24 hrs is not enough!". Well the fault simply lies not in the workings of nature but rather in one's addiction to the cellphone (or should i say "cell" phone).

I would say a better strategy is just to have 2 hours of work time and perhaps 15-30 mins of technology related fun time. In this way, both will be efficient processes! Cellphone notifications are just an example. There could be many more distractions. One has to do a critical analysis to mitigate all factors that could lead to a drop in study efficiency.