Train Your Brain

Multi-tasking can be a blessing and a curse.

So you can take on several duties at once. What that amounts too is your employer can have you doing two jobs half assed for the price of one, rather than pay two people to do a specific job good.

The person that is multi-tasked in responsibilty faces burn out because they don't have any time to take a breath.

Blessing is that you are a value to the company but are you being compensated for what you're worth?

Chicks multitask. Guys don't. Sorry guys but during the growth process as your body produces testosterone, it is taking away your ability to multitask. Me? I can't even think and type at the same time...

Safety Manager, Engineering, Outsourcing, Quality Control Supervisor.

That's the kind of multi-tasking that I'm talking about.

Yes, women have multiple disconnected thoughts going through their heads and mens thinking is compartmentalized.

Sometimes you have to tell women that we were talking about ways to get next months house payment and budget for the trip next month, when she suddenly starts on a tangent about her friend Betty having an affair to get them back on track.

I multitask all the time and often vigorously for up to ten hours a day. Here one example of what multitasking is to a average farmer or rancher.

When I am cutting hay with the tractor and hay conditioner I steer the tractor with my left hand, steer and lift or lower the hay conditioner with the hydraulic levers using my right hand, I have my left foot on the dual range clutch (The tractor transmission has the high/low built into the clutch linkage) and my right foot on the brakes which has both right and left sides as independent pedals as well.

In many ground conditions while turning around at the end of a field I am using all four limbs at once, remembering where I am going, watching where I am at and then looking back to where I was every few seconds. And I am doing this all at six miles an hour!

I do a full 180 degree turn, swing the conditioner over from the right side to the left side of the tractor and line up both the tractor and conditioner to within a few inches of where I need them to be as well. And the tractor and hay conditioner are about 22 feet wide when fully set out.

So thats one steering wheel, a two range clutch, two brake pedals, two hydraulic levers, watching and remembering three points on the ground 50 feet apart and moving at 6 miles an hour while doing a full 180 degree turn all at once.

In the strait away cuts I only steer the tractor with one hand and steer the conditioner with the other while watching and remembering where I am going where I am at and whats coming out the back end of the conditioner. Actual looking forward is done only for a few seconds at at time and only accounts for about 20% of my total observation time. The rest is spent watching for whatever may be hiding in the grass I am cutting and watching the equipment and whats it doing.

Men cant multi task my ass. YOU city guys cant multitask worth crap. Us farm guys can do it without even thinking that we are doing it let alone need to figure out what it worth to us!

My city raised buddies cant even handle a steering wheel and a hydraulic lever together let alone all the other stuff while moving AND having to look around!

And as far as job title related multitasking, I am so over qualified by typical standards business will hire me. I am too much of a threat to the single taskers and screw ups. They know I can do their job right along with my own. And likely better than they can being I know what goes on and is involved in other processes or functions of the business as a whole.

Intelligence is variable, for example when a newborn son or daughter arrives home, the intelligence of the parents increases abruptly, and this is the best time to negotiate with the most ferocious and sophisticated client and to begin the masterpiece project. For some reason, a newborn child generates a reordering effect within our brains. Jaime Soto Figueroa

Practice will make you better multitasker if a person is enthusiastic about the task and would want to make a difference. Lazy people will never be good multitaskers even when they practice and train