Friday, April 23, 2010

Quick Takes: One Thing At A Time

I've been rather hyped-up on self-discovery and analyzation in the last two years.

So, in early 2009, I was quite excited to feel that I made some sort of breakthrough and solved a piece of my life-puzzle.

It goes like this:

A) I was feeling extremely depressed and unhappy with almost everything.
B) I wanted to find a solution to my depression.
C) The one thing I could think of that made me happy was being creative.
D) Therefore to me, being creative was akin to being happy.
E) And, therefore, I decided to do as many creative projects as possible in 2009.
F) That would solve everything and I would be happy.

Makes sense, no?

If I recall the moments in my life where I feel the most positive, it would be those moments where I am working on new music (generally for myself).

So, with that theory in mind, I set out to incorporate as many new forms of creative self-expression into my life.

I began writing more, working on humorous t-shirt ideas, coming up with web comic ideas (which have not come to light yet since lo-ku beat me to the punch!) and starting a series of new musical side projects.

Yeah! That will keep me busy. And more importantly, it will help to alleviate my crippling depression.

Right?

Wrong.

Wrong? Why?

A month or so ago, I figured out another key element to that puzzle that was out of place.

Through the process of overloading myself with as many projects as possible, I began to notice that I got less done. In fact, a lot less. My mind was scattered across multiple ideas, and had trouble focusing. I was intimidated and had trouble starting any of them.

Also, at my day job, I took on some new tasks for a while that soon proved something that I had not known about myself:

I am not a multitasker.

Nope.

After several life examples of my non-multitasking (or shite) abilities, I saw that I am at my best when I have a single goal to focus my mind on, otherwise, I get overwhelmed with options and possibilities, and then nothing gets done.

So my goal of doing as many creative projects as possible as a solution to my depression was a good one; but it left out one important discovery about the kind of person I am.

A uni-tasker.

So, are YOU really a multitasker?
blog comments powered by Disqus