Last week was quite productive if you can measure productivity in the number of entries posted. This week, however, you should not expect the same amount of rambling; mediocre project planning at work and important client’s mysterious need to set deadlines at the same time has turned this week into hell-on-earth. I’m expecting to work at least 12 hour days.

12 hours might not sound too bad, and it would not have been that bad if I had the chance to focus on one task at the time, thus being effective. Instead I have to continuously multitask between tasks thanks to the constant stream of incoming e-mails and phone calls. To be able to stay reasonably focused when working with more than one thing at the same time is a challenge and can be quite stressful at times. There is also a limit of how many tasks I’m able to handle at any given time and when I reach my limit, I have to start to prioritize - something I’m not that good at because I try to give every client my undivided attention, which is impossible.

When I reach my limit, I’m seeing some signs that I might be a bit schizophrenic. Sometimes I just want to crawl up under my desk and stay there until everything go away. In the next moment, however, I regain control of the situation, get the feeling that I can manage and that gives me a feeling of accomplishment. Maybe it’s perfectly normal, maybe I’m about to go insane.

Know this: No matter how much your management (not mine) try to convince you that you’re just as effective when you’re doing several tasks at once as when you’re working with one task, they are wrong. At least if you, like me, are a computer programmer, there is no way in hell you can multitask between your IDE, your e-mail client, your cellphone, your colleagues and your IM client, say, 10 times within the same amount of minutes and work efficiently on your code. It’s just not possible.

Anyway, no matter how much I want to crawl up and have time stop for a couple of minutes when things pile up, watching the last Simpsons Movie trailer always makes be laugh.

Spider Pig. Hilarious.