This is an excerpt from an essay by Walter Kirn, in theAtlantic.com. It really hit home for me, as I was reading the essay while eating breakfast, logging onto PW, petting my dog, making coffee, checking my calendar for the day, doing laundry, reading a magazine article on a Japanese artist...IM me and I'll send you a link to the article if you're interested. If you're feeling the stress of too many things to do and not enough time to do them all, I urge you to read it!

"Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we’re supposed to be concentrating on...

Even worse, certain studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy."

Wow, this so rings true for me...

I'm doing much better in post-menopause, but one of the things that it seems I truly lost with peri, was the ability to do many things at once. Now I feel like a dunderhead at times, plodding thru' only one thing at a time, and then feeling irked if anyone asks ANYTHING of me while I'm doing it.

Even fixing dinner, making dishes I've prepared for years, requires a different kind of attention, if it's going to come out edible. If a lot of people are around and too much is going on at once, I become very rattled and annoyed...

I suppose this isn't a bad thing, but I do miss being so darned productive!

Thanks for posting this excerpt - bet lots of the sisters will relate to it.

JJ

I just wrote a post on concentration! It must be on people's mind today.

I read an article saying that multitasking tends to be terribly inefficiant and results in poorer quality work.

Good cover, that article....

Thanks so much for posting this. I just found the Walter Kirn article online and read it all the way through. It is so right on. Over the last 10 years or so, I've found myself feeling that odd disconnected feeling that there's something wrong with my brain... when in fact it's a result of the staccato way I'm living my life -- too much input, fired too rapidly. I work remotely (software industry) and am continually bombarded with phone calls, alarmed messages popping up on my screen, emails coming in, faxes -- all from different senders in different realms with different needs and messages. I find it sometimes painful to

..the phone just rang and took me completely out of what i was trying to write..

I find it sometimes painful to try to pivot between the different realms and people and tasks. Dealing professionally with people is in itself a form of theater (you have to be "on") and to jump between different roles, often with no preparation time, is difficult. On my good days (which are fewer and fewer), I can manage. On my bad days, I reach over and turn the ringer off, wait for the message and then have time to process it. When I was 38, I was great at rapid-fire work. At 51, it is a challenge.

I feel that this complicated multi-task overlay -- never really getting into anything deeply for a long period of time, or getting "flow" -- has changed me as a person. for the worse. I'm more irritable, often feel overwhelmed and powerless, my vocabulary has shrunk, and I don't experience beauty or wonder in the ways I did when i was younger. I think Georgia O'Keeffe may have had the right idea -- move somewhere beautiful, slow down, focus on beauty in the natural world, retain your personal essence.

Declining hormones make it all harder. But technology is changing the core of our society. Perfection of means, confusion of aims, as Einstein said.

L2

Duch, where is your post? I can't find it and I'd love to read it.

Well said, L2! I keep fantasizing about moving to the country and raising sheep, spinning my own yarn, knitting lovely things. Enough of the insanity!

I was never, ever able to hold a thought in my head for more than a few seconds, and there is always a whirlwind of activity going on in my brain. I can say with certainty, that I have never completed a single task, start to finish, in my entire life. So much for multitasking, I'm probably omnitasking, doing everything possible at once, and never finishing anything.

And I have worn my blouse inside-out on a number of occasions, and just last week, a co-worker told me I had a dryer sheet hanging off the back of my trousers. At least it wasn't toilet paper!

Chocolatewoman

Its in the Menopausal ADD thread by Marcy, forth from the top

Menopausal ADD

and, if you've a moment:

Can't Concentrate?