Multi-Tasking Is Killing My Productivity
I'm not sure why I thought working from home
with a baby would be in any way shape or form easy.
It's not.
It's actually the hardest thing I've ever done.
Especially right now when he is boycotting naps, my milk supply is not doing so hot so he's cluster feeding, he hates the swing & bouncer and screams bloody murder in a baby carrier. It's impossible. That leaves either me or Dustin to hold him and entertain him 24/7. Oh and did I mention the white noise? It's non-stop in this household.
Most days I'm snappy or on the edge because I'm just so overwhelmed. Childcare on the daily is just not an option and although we're making it work, I'm losing my ever loving mind.
That being said, through this I've made the realization that multi-tasking is a bunch of bs. If you want to do a task and do it well, you need to be entirely focused on that task. And in doing so, you'll actually save yourself far more time.
With Hayden, it can be frustrating to stop what I'm doing to focus solely on feeding and getting him to nap, but when I do, it only takes 15 minutes whereas if I'm trying to create a post, edit photos, get on my stories and feed him at the same time, we're both struggling, frustrated and it takes twice the amount of time that it would if I did both tasks separately and individually.
It's frustrating for someone like me who tends to jump to multi-tasking to get as much done as possible, but it's also a blessing in disguise because it forces me to slow down and have patience. I'm not saying I'm good at it, far from it in fact. It's something I'm trying to work at a little more and more each day. But I thought it was an interesting revelation.
So regardless of if you have kids or not, I encourage you to slow down and try to do one task at a time. You may just find that the quality of your work as well as your productivity improves exponentially. You may also find yourself doing less work because I find when I slow down and think through things I can find ways to eliminate unnecessary tasks that I wouldn't have realized to cross off if I hadn't taken the time to truly process what I was doing.