Welcome To The Real World
A few weeks ago, one of my local TV morning shows ran a piece about a new book that is supposed to help people de-stress their lives. During the interview, the author gave advice about prioritizing tasks, setting aside “down” time and other such things. I actually wasn’t listening too closely because most of my attention was focused on getting ready for work and making sure my cat didn’t fall off my shoulder, which can be a little tricky when she weighs 17 lbs. and is 13 years old. In the back of my mind I heard the author say, “People have got to stop multi-tasking.”
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, I was standing in front of the TV, cat on the floor, curling iron in the sink he had my full attention. Multitasking is a major source of stress, the author argued over the course of his interview. It keeps our minds cluttered, dilutes our attention and inhibits the satisfaction of completing a job.
It wasn’t a bad argument. There certainly were elements of truth in it…don’t we all sometimes get overwhelmed by consistently doing four things at once? Still, as I bent down to pick up my cat while walking back to the sink and the curling iron, I shook my head and wondered, “What planet is he from?”
Are You Guilty?
What are you doing right now? Are you sitting quietly reading this magazine with an uncluttered mind or are you waiting for a meeting to start, thinking about the inventory scheduled to arrive today and listening to the other conversations in the room? I can tell you that while I write this I’m also eating lunch and downloading photos from an Internet site. In between sentences, I listen to the sales meeting taking place down the hall and think about the phone calls I need to make.
Who can afford to do one thing at a time? Who has that much time or that many employees? Multi-tasking has become a way of life for most people. Every garden center owner, every employee, every manufacturer is being asked to “do more with less” it’s the new buzz word for 21st-century business.
With Christmas 2005 barely a memory, many of you are getting ready for the spring peak while planning for 2006 holiday events that won’t happen for approximately another nine months. Good planning or unnecessary multi-tasking? You schedule some garden center visits while away at a trade show. Wise use of resources or unnecessary multi-tasking? I could go on and on because retail necessitates multi-tasking, even more so when you deal in live products.
Sanity Check
Not only would those of us happily employed in garden retailing probably disagree about the evils of multi-tasking, but we must actually enjoy it. To remain in such a highly seasonal, must-turn industry, there has to be something more than tradition and pretty flowers keeping us here.
I think we thrive on the pressure; we take satisfaction in having lots of balls in the air at the same time. I think we’d get bored if we only worked on one project at a time. I think we’re born multi-taskers.
And by the way, the day I saw the interview about multi-tasking the day I stopped everything else and watched the segment on TV, I missed my train and was late for work. At least for me, multi-tasking is a necessity.
Videos
