I had one of my favorite mixergy interviews with Zaadz founder, Brian Johnson on in the background today while doing some work.  Brian is my kind of entrepreneur, a guy who has seemed to have found the amazing intersection of personal meaning and business.   There’s a ton of great stuff in this interview, things I will most likely write about down the road, but there was one thing in particular that struck me.  Brian says he’s learning to embrace the fact that he is an entrepreneur, a creator and with the lifestyle comes mistakes. Lots of them. There is no avoiding them or denying them, they will come sooner or later.  So as he’s embraced who he is, he’s also learning to embrace the falling down and the more comfortable he gets in the falling down, the less he fears it.  I want to embrace it too.

So I guess this blog post is a first step there.  As I’ve discussed before, I struggle as much if not more with the fear of what others will think of me after a mistake as the consequences of the mistake itself.  So let’s just get this out of the way now: For anyone working with me or anyone who may work with me in the near or distant future, I’m going to make mistakes.  In fact I  may make a lot mistakes, but I will get up and move on from each one a little bit smarter. I’m telling you now, so it will be even easier to tell you later. I will do my best to deal with whatever the consequences of the mistakes may be. I’ll do all I can to learn from them and move forward.

There, now that we have that out of the way, let’s get on with the doing…

But, wait. Should it be breaking news that a single person can’t juggle knives and explain quantum physics while polishing off an artichoke?

Breaking news and a shock to the researchers themselves, as it turns out. Originally, the team of researchers, whose findings are published in the Aug. 24 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were trying to find out what unusual cognitive gifts multitaskers possessed that made them so successful at multitasking.

They’re still looking.

“Multitaskers were just lousy at everything,” said Clifford I. Nass, a professor of communication at Stanford and one of the study’s investigators. “It was a complete and total shock to me.”

Initially suspecting that multitaskers possessed some rare and enviable qualities that helped them process simultaneous channels of information, Professor Nass had been “in awe of them,” he said, acknowledging that he himself is “dreadful” at multitasking. “I was sure they had some secret ability. But it turns out that high multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy.”

I’ll be the first to admit I have my moments where I’m in the middle of 5 things all at the same time.  I’ll also admit that I’m usually on the computer doing something while on a phone call (checking email, looking things up, etc), and I KNOW that I’m not doing either task (talking on the phone or reading on the internet or email) particularly well, yet I can’t help myself.  I’ve been more aware of my multitasking over the last few months, making an effort to only have one thing in front of me at a time, but I have to say it is REALLY hard.  Multitasking is a really hard habit to break.  I wonder if that in a world where multitasking is supported, encouraged, heck even forced, we’re putting ourselves in a position to have to work more in order to make up for mediocrity.

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• Why Multitaskers Stink at Multitasking (blogs.wsj.com)
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