Sue Waters

On Friday I decided to let the cat out of the bag on how I fit everything in and still manage to sleep by multitasking at an incredible level. Quite a few of my readers found it extremely funny and many could totally relate to it! And I ROFL when I read Kevin’s post, so we ran a multitasking competition — to see who is the greatest multitasker!

But before I show you some of the entries by readers — let me tell you that I was totally busted on Friday morning because I was invited to join an Abode Connect session (another type of live classroom) and one of the participants had read my post so asked how many virtual classroom session I was in at that moment! OOPs maybe I should not have let my secret out! So since I was busted I told them that while in the session I was also running a multitasking competition and would they like to join it?

Here is my screenshot to prove it! And what a fitting image! We are going to have to embrace multitasking to maximise the potential of social networking!

Here’s some entries by readers!

Now there were some that called themselves an unitasker e.g. Darren Draper — however with 5 kids I find that really hard to believe! This is Darren photo (if the words are too hard to read they say “What was it I was working on?”)

Kristin said check out “the image of my desktop need I say more 🙂 I knew I liked you for a reason” This entry is right up there just for liking me 🙂

I made Kevin cry from how much he laughed at my post. And he even sent me an email explaining his screenshot of multitasking (he has dual monitors).

• On screen 1: have Firefox open with 9 tabs (gmail, campus mail, greader, two wiki windows, google analytics, mybloglog, facebook, Blogger dashboard, Acrobat reader (conference call background info), Textmate for taking notes, A very clean dock 🙂 – cause I use Quicksilver, and a few minimized apps.

• On Screen 2 – Second life (shopping for land), iSight video session (where you can see I’m on another call as well 🙂 ), calculator (required for doing currency conversions in SL 🙂 ); several chats (6) IM, Jabber, and one GTalk (though I don’t know where it went cause that was my most active window – behind SL?; Twitteriffic; and Mail – my primary mail account that gets its own window.

Poor Michael went home for lunch and ended up getting drawn into Sue World while he also had lunch, read a book and I believe he mentioned had a bath?

Gary has been very busy at a conference blogging and twittering while listening [image by IaRuth]. EvilSue has challenged that this is actually multitasking and another commenter said good point I think that only qualifies as bi-tasking.

My thoughts are that it is so amazing now that at conferences we do multi-task and venues that don’t provide Internet access are not looking after their participants!

Here are some of the comments by readers (sorry forgot to record the tweets)!

• Poor Michelle – she thought she was doing well with “10 tabs open in Firefox until she read my post”
• Frances – “multi tasking is a regular occurrance for Sue. She certainly leaves us all in her wake. We can only look up to you in awe 🙂
• Julie – I multitasks well but wishes I could ‘type’ faster and with more accuracy, also that my laptop memory was a little larger”
• Laura – “I thought I was doing okay until I read your how you do it…I have my freelancing mac for design in the middle of my kitchen, plus my laptop for my main work next to it…i can communicate, design and cook/clean/attend to kids and pets at near enough the same time…but…never will be as multi as you! Wow!”
• Rachel – “The one thing I can’t stand is when I’m working on comp at home and I have about 4 or 5 skype chats randomly starting all at the same time (professional and personal)… that does my head in” Me – too Rachel even I struggle with that!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thinking I might need to get a dual monitor? Wonder how much more I can achieve with two?

So what are your thoughts? Are you multitasking? Do you multi-task more than these people? Who do you think is the greatest multitasker?

Are you embracing the future?