This may be the fastest column I've ever written - technically and literally.
I'm traveling about 464 miles per hour somewhere over Missouri. My awareness of this statistic is courtesy an announcement from our flight captain. I'm writing on deadline today. Well, today is yesterday by the time you read this - but never mind with the time/space details.
In the interest of transparency, this column really was due yesterday - two days ago for you. I'm between a rock and a hard place, or in this case: a four-hour flight and a deadline. I know, I know: I'm flying somewhere, pity me. That aside, we're all familiar with the qualm of the deadline-tagged, last-minute assignment we've put off just a bit too long. Consultants call it procrastination. I call it my "Organized Homework Sensitivity Handling and Intensity Tactic."
In either form, a new perspective of "deadline" develops.
I waited to write until this flight knowing that I'd be forced to concentrate. While the deadline demands attention and forces productivity, it's not the sole focusing aid. I'm 40,000 feet in the air. There are few distractions here.
The absence of Internet accessibility prohibits the spontaneous lure of e-mail, Facebook, chat clients and subsequent statosphere updating. There are no e-mail alert windows or chimes to divert my attention. Even the cell phone is powered down. I'm completely disconnected from the world here; an eerie, yet oddly comforting fact.
Kansas City, on my right.
Oh no. Have I become old? Just like that! Overnight? My multitasking abilities have dissipated into thin air along with my tolerance for ignorance, all-nighters and fart jokes. When I really want to focus on work now, I find myself closing every non-critical application on my computer. I force myself into the environment I'm in right now, sealed off from everyone.
What happened to the glory days of late-night IHOP visits with friends to cram for tests, or the massive study sessions at the library? In retrospect, those were only necessary because of the prior lack of productivity. Not only had I failed to achieve anything up to that cram session, but neither had my friends. Further hindsight reveals an even more misled trust of those late-night study sessions.
Here I am now, 30 or so minutes into writing, buds in my ears but no music playing on the iPod to which they're attached. I fear turning it back on. If I do, it'll have to be a new album. Familiar music pulls my interest from logic to lyrics.
Minor turbulence.
In defense of single-tasking, I must say it's strangely gratifying. Periodic, perhaps hourly retreats to my Internet browser are just rewards for 50-some minutes of solid, dedicated work. Wow, now I'm exhibiting self-discipline, a skill undoubtedly traded for that fart joke humor.
Clearly I'm not respecting deadlines any more or less than past situations. Irresponsibly, but truthfully some of academic life is sorting the real issues from the pseudo-ones. Our on-demand culture conditions us to need, nay want things now. We got too impatient to wait for e-mail at our office, so we put it on our phones. We can't stand to have unread text messages, never mind the very existence of mobile communication as it is. It's not enough to have applications on our computers, we need them on our phones.
Therein lay the problem - I'm too attached to let go of any of it. Consequently, this "now, now, now" environment has enhanced procrastination and destroyed the ideal of a deadline. We can no longer successfully prioritize. Today everything is time-sensitive and demands our attention now; it's leveled the mountains of urgency. This bastardizes our sense of prioritization and disrupts our ability to multi-task.
Then again, that's all multitasking is: a dismal mix of failed priorities.
Deadlines are invisible finish lines of little importance. Life's true time-sensitive situations need no deadlines. They demand attention immediately and do not cease annoyance until needs are met - situations like the crying child four rows behind me who needs stowed in the overhead compartment. Deadlines serve solely as incentives to react and discipline. Were we all able to prioritize properly and avoid multitasking, we'd be a more productive society.
I imagine it'd also solve world peace, end conservative "teabagging" and win the Obama daughters another cute puppy. See - our multi-tasking is ending the world. Ultimately, we get more done by doing less.
Well, that's it - column's done. If only I could send it now. I'm in a nearly 500-mph. projectile and I can't log into Gmail?
Guess I'm missing deadline - again.
Write to Dave at heydave@bewilderedsociety.com
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