I’m reading Cathy Davidson’s engaging Now You See It (Penguin 2012), and am struck by the fact that as I read her describe the tug of multi-tasking, I am simultaneously experiencing that exact tug. For instance, I just clicked away from the screen where I’ve been annotating her chapter to begin writing this blog post. And as I write this post, I am wondering if I should have kept reading instead. I am also thinking that I want to go on a bike ride before the light fails, and that the lasagna-in-a-slowcooker experiment bubbling in the kitchen smells great. And I’m thinking about the invitation to write a chaper for an upcoming anthology. And about the essay I owe someone else by April… My pulse is elevated, and I feel slightly frantic that I’m not getting everything done.
All this while I AM ON SABBATICAL!
So yes, I understand the pull of distraction. And while I see her point that we need a new way to work that doesn’t depend on individual goal-oriented blinked attention, I wonder just how she wrote this book if she didn’t tune out all the distractions that must certainly demand her attention.
Do I have too many irons in the fire? Or not enough?
Digging Liberal Arts 