As a sometime contributor to the open source project Tracks - a Ruby on Rails application that helps you follow the GTD philosophy of managing your life - you’d think I wouldn’t get overwhelmed very often.

Not so much.

Today I found myself doing the following tasks all at once:

1. installing thrudb
2. setting up config files for the new mysql slave server in puppet
3. installing innodb hot backup, reading the docs on it
4. chatting with my friend mike - a rockstar dba - about best practice in mysql replication
5. fixing one of our scrapers at streeteasy
6. reading about earthclassmail.com
7. rsync’ing master db data and schema dumps to the new slave server
8. responding to someone in an irc channel
9. remembering to make a payment on my credit card
10. reserving a table at les halles.
11. reading my email (streeteasy)
12. reading my email (brighter)
13. trying to remember to open NNW to see if it really was free
14. trying to remember to look up docs on couchdb
15. instead remembering a great line in the book I was reading on the subway this morning - Life Is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera - and posting it to my tumblog.

It was while I was flipping between opentable.com, developers.facebook.com/thrift/, my IM client, my IRC client, my mail client, and so on and so forth that I found myself staring at an empty google search box wondering wtf I was doing.

I realized I was getting overwhelmed and trying to do too much at once. Of course us humans are generally smart and able to juggling lots of things at once, and of course I was actually juggling a lot more than listed above in the 15 points. This doesn’t make me a genius or anything like that - ok, a little ambitious sure - in fact, I’ve found that it’s making me more scatter-brained and distracted than anything else.

In trying to be good at everything one ends up being only “alright” in general. Who wants to be so blandly ordinary and dull?

My next thought was that I should go check out what tips the blog lifehacker.com has for managing one’s time and productivity…

.. when I realized that was just yet another item to add to the list, and that wouldn’t help me.

So to my fellow multi-tasking information hunting and new application writing programmers and friends: how the hell do you get so much done every day?

Sincerely,
me.