I listened to a TED Talk the other morning on the way into work. We all multi-task. Some tasks are easy to do simultaneously: walk and chew gum, pedal an exercise bike and watch TV, cook and chat on your cell or with your family. Some things are harder to do at the same time as doing something else...
But what we're really talking about here is not really doing two things at the exact same time, but juggling multiple projects over the same time frame or introducing new ones as you finish others in a revolving process of creating.
The speaker of this TED Talk, Tim Harford, references Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin as some of the greatest slow-motion multi-taskers of all time.
So when Einstein came up against some roadblock in his research or experiments, he would switch projects--to something he was equally excited and passionate about--allowing the issue in the first project to take a back seat and give his brain a chance to noodle on it subconsciously.
That kind of multi-tasking, Mr. Harford says, is why people like Einstein and Darwin were productive and successful through the whole of their lives.
An interesting concept and I'd encourage you to have a listen for yourself.
I don't know if it's a process that works for writing multiple books. Book 7 remains stalled and I have a second short I'm planning on publishing in time for my conference. I'd love to get Book 7 done and published too. I have a schedule in place for the two, but one is scheduled after the other, they're not intertwined. But maybe, just maybe, I can schedule days for working on Book 7 and try to make progress...
I hope you have a great weekend.
