Trying to be in Two Meetings at Once

Today I found myself needed in two meetings at the same time. Both required my attention and so I had to defer one until the other completed. That didn't keep the second meeting from sending me instant messages, which kept disrupting my first meeting. I could relax a bit when my first meeting ended and I could concentrate on the second.

Contrary to popular belief, humans are horrible at multitasking. While some think they can do two things at once, they really can't. What happens is that they focus on one and ignore the other. They then switch their focus and it feels like they are multitasking. This works well for my wife sewing and watching television at the same time. It doesn't work so well when she is sewing and I try to talk with her. She has to stop sewing to participate in the conversation.

I found myself trying to focus on my first meeting this morning as it happened to be with my boss. Every time I got a message from the second meeting, I had to ignore the first meeting. That worked as long as I was not needed. I made sure to glance over at the message only when another team member talked about something unrelated to me. If the message needed a response, I would start to answer but stop at every word and listen to see if someone required my input. Then I would write the next word. Writing and listening slowed me down significantly. While I may have appeared to be multitasking, I really wasn't. Fortunately I got through the first meeting without making a fool of myself.

I immediately jumped to the second meeting and listened intently for an hour and a half, providing feedback when needed. We tried to solve a networking issue using a new technology and eventually ran out of time. The person we tried to help ran up against a time constraint. While my afternoon had just started, he works in a part of the world where it came up on midnight. I thought I had it tough with trying to juggle Europe and Japan. At least Japan understands when it gets late and won't keep me in a meeting past 9pm. We will continue the meeting tomorrow morning and my hope is we will be able to get the problem solved. Unfortunately my morning is so packed with meetings, I hope I don't have to juggle two at once again.