Multitasking

Lately I have taken a look at how I try to do too much at the same time and how that can get me into trouble. The reason I started looking at this is because of a boat casualty this week. When I get done with my morning shower, I like to hang my towel out in the cockpit of the boat so it will dry. Before I head into the office, I bring the towel inside. This is because San Francisco has gotten a lot of rain lately and I don't want to come back to the boat and have a completely soaked towel. This can happen even though the day may start out sunny. Lately I have felt that I live in Seattle and not San Francisco.

Friday I must have had too much on my mind because I left the towel outside and forgot about it. I then headed to the airport after work and didn't get back to the boat until Monday evening. Naturally my towel was nowhere to be found. I assume that the wind blew it away. I did a look around the marina, but never found it.

How many other times have I left the lights on or forgotten something important because I was distracted? This week, I decided that it all boils down to multitasking. I start working on something, get interrupted and have to do something else. If I am lucky, I might actually get back to my original task, but more often than not, I am drawn to other tasks. Pretty soon, I am working on three or four tasks at the same time.

When computers multitask, they are about as inefficient as us humans. They work on a problem for a bit, save off all the information to someplace safe, then work on the next problem. When it comes time to work on the original problem, they copy all the saved information back to the working area and continue. The only advantage that computers have is that they are really good about remember what they are working on. In the case of the forgotten towel, I was packing up my dirty clothes, cleaning the boat, and brushing my teeth. When it came time to lock up the boat, I completely forgot about the towel.

In thinking about how I lost my towel, I have tried to come up with a way to keep that from happening again. One option is to just hang the towel inside the boat and forget about letting it dry outside. Unfortunately there is not enough air circulation in a boat and so nothing ever really dries. Mildew is a huge problem on boats. Borrowing a trick from my computer, I think I have devised a solution. My boat has a stainless-steel cable that runs around the outside called a lifeline. It is meant to keep all sailors in the boat when out on the water. It also works great as a drying line. Rather than hang my towel someplace out of the way on the lifeline, I now hang it right in my way so that I trip over it when I try to leave the boat. That way, I will never forget it again. In a way, that is what computers do. When they finish one task, they know what to work on next because it is right in front of them. So if you ever come to my house or boat and see things scattered on the ground, it is just my way of keeping track of what I am doing.