Multi-tasking. This is one skill, which would help me a lot right now. I got into one task for last three hours and I am waiting for last 20 minutes for something to finish so that I can continue. I don’t want to start something else meanwhile. I had made a list of 6 or 7 “things-to-do” in the morning, but I don’t want to get out this one. Sometimes the intention is to finish one by one. It gives a very nice feeling to mark each item as completed. It will give a very good feeling if all items are marked at the end of the day. But it never happens.

It needs something called context switching. If all 6 items are entirely different from each other, there is reluctance from within to start doing next one. It is just like trying to drive, shift the gears gradually and get going in full speed, then apply sudden break, then start all over again.

My previous boss (a lady) once forwarded a clip, saying women are better at multi-tasking than men are:-
“This evolutionary divide can be seen all over the modern world. Almost exclusively airport traffic controllers are male, this appeals to their spatial skills after all and they are intrinsically better at it then women. On the other hand, the majority of secretaries are female, this isn’t because of male oppression but simply that women are better at the multitasking needed to do this job. “

No idea whether this true. It needs ability to leave something unfinished and not even think about it afterwards. It becomes more difficult when all these 6 items will have to continue for a week and little of each has to be done every day. I need to determine a sequence, time to spend on each task and put time slots for each.

Knowing when to stop pursuing something is vital. To increase the efficiency, one should know when to shift the gears. If you are heading for a dead end in any one of them, either change tracks immediately or leave it as it is and come back later to have a fresh look.

So let me abandon what I am doing right now and move on to next in the list.