Multi-tasking vs. Master-tasking
My Weekend Disaster Required Some ‘Attention Switching’
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How was your weekend?
I had a very multi-tasking few days lined up.
Late Friday, I started today’s article with a few ideas sketched in a draft file. I then watched a pro wrestling show in preparation for another pro wrestling show on Saturday, after which a friend and I would do our weekly livestream at our pro wrestling channel.
On Saturday, I’d also have to record the Sunday Buffet podcast and get all the show notes uploaded along with a good take of the audio-video file. It would have to be done before 8 p.m. And I had plenty else to do Saturday, like chores around the home, cooking, attending a vigil liturgy at my parish, and keeping up on news, sports, and correspondence.
And then …
… I found myself doing far less multi-tasking and more focusing on one big problem: my laptop died.
It was a steady demise through Saturday, starting with a crash that cut my first attempt at recording the Sunday Buffet. The machine had trouble booting up prior to the crash, so I left it alone for a couple hours while going to church. Back home, I watched the laptop do a lengthy “Self Repair” on startup, and then squeezed in another try at the podcast.
I got a clean take finished a few minutes before 8 p.m. and went to close the web browsers while the recording did its “file converting” thing. Except the browsers wouldn’t close. And then the whole computer crashed again.
So much for all the multi-tasking and variety of work I was supposed to get done!
One major thing at a time
The wrestling livestream had to be postponed, since I couldn’t watch anything on the laptop (which is my “TV” and everything else pertaining to electronic media). All my news browsing and message replying and relaxing had to be put on hold indefinitely, too.
I spent the next few hours focusing on one thing, to the exclusion of anything else: trying to get the computer to boot up and stay functional long enough to get the Sunday Buffet fully converted to the right kind of file for Substack. On what would be the final successful reboot — as I learned after the ensuing crash — I found a miraculously converted podcast file on the desktop, even though the process kept getting interrupted by crashes all night.
I got a browser to stay open long enough to send the audio & video to a Substack draft, but the ultimate demise happened before I could verify the show, add titles and show notes, and schedule publication.
The old machine was stuck on something worse than the “blue screen of death” (BSOD) that has become part of Microsoft lore. I went to sleep Saturday not knowing yet what became of the file uploaded to Substack, nor whether I’d have a podcast at all this week.
Early Sunday morning, I had one mission: get a new laptop. It took three electronics stores before I found something that was in stock on a holiday weekend and that would work with my setup.
Back home Sunday afternoon, I had one mission: boot up the new machine and do as much hardware/software configuration as was necessary for me to begin using it.
By late afternoon with an adequately functional new laptop, I had one mission: see what became of the Substack upload.
As you know if you’re a subscriber who receives my thrice-weekly emails, there was a Sunday Buffet this week, albeit 11-and-a-half hours late. Things sort-of worked out, with the only lasting damage occurring to my finances, heh.
Awake at the switch
We humans are good at adapting. Evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein likes to refer to our abilities to grapple with novelty and variety by saying, “Our niche is niche switching.”
It happens with skills and with our attention. We can flip between multi-tasking or focusing on a single task to master.
But it takes effort, especially in an electronic-media-driven world in which there’s so much available simultaneously.
I appeared on “The Jeff Macolino Podcast” on Monday, May 26, 2025, for the first of what promises to be a three-part conversation (YouTube video embedded above, or listen at Spotify, Apple, ListenNotes, Amazon, and Podchaser).
Toward the second half of this episode, host Jeff Macolino and I explored — quite attentively! — the challenges and benefits of multi-tasking vs. concentrating on one thing.
I observed:
We live in a multi-tasking media world.
…
Paying attention [to one thing] has now become disruptive for a lot of people’s routines.
When Jeff and I recorded the conversation a week earlier, I had no idea how drastically different and disruptive the demands for my attention would be on Saturday and Sunday.
And as you’ve probably guessed, this isn’t the article I began drafting on Friday.
But I’m glad to be a human who can switch modes, niches, attention, and any other faculties when warranted.
Knowing when you can bounce between several tasks and when greater focus is needed for something, tends to improve your productivity and even your general well-being.
Beyond those personal benefits, purposefully deploying your own attention — rather than letting media (“social” or otherwise) and various authority figures dictate your priorities and behavior — helps you respond in a good-neighborly fashion to those around you.
I hope your weekend was better and less costly than mine. But if it wasn’t, I hope you flipped the necessary switches and met your challenges, too.
So, like I asked in the first sentence …
… How was your weekend?
Ever get the “blue screen of death” or worse on your devices?
What kinds of tasks can get you to focus your attention and stop doing so many different things at once?
Anything else about today’s themes you’d like to express in the Comments section?
Let me know your thoughts below …
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My book, Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen, is available at:
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And, as always: Be a good neighbor, even if it makes you a bad citizen.
Did you get caught up on the wrasslin?