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The Myth of Multitasking is a short book that conveys a single, critical idea: to do two things at once is to do neither.

The Myth of Multitasking: How Doing It All Gets Nothing Done, by J.D.

JD’s blog entry begins with him describing the 227 tasks open on his computer as he writes. “That’s 227 discrete tasks awaiting my attention. That doesn’t count the dozen or so books submitted for review, the eight unread personal finance magazines, and the pile of papers spilling onto the floor.”

He says multitasking is really switchtasking and not productive. While I generally agree, there are times to set a task aside and let it ripen while you work on something else. Switchtasking in larger chunks can lead to more creative completions than sloughing through each task one at a time. Hand some off to your unconscious for ripening. The trick is knowing when to do that - not letting it become an excuse for procrastinating.

Parallel task - internally - tasks waiting quietly on the computer don’t count.

…In my experience successful risk takers are not overly preoccupied with making mistakes. They learn and move on. They are also individuals who are willing to admit when they are wrong….

Most importantly, these are people who minimize the downside and focus on what could go right. They are relentlessly upbeat problem solvers. To succeed in business - and in social media environments - today, one has to be made of this cloth. It’s not just about resiliency and endurance - it’s about flexibility and adaptability. These are qualities that will also serve organizations well….

Risk is not a Four-Letter Word, Valeria Maltoni

I’d say the real risk is being blind to being wrong.
One antidote is the focus on what could go right and recognizing when the evidence doesn’t support the hope of that focus.

43folders has a guest post, Cooking for the Creative Beast that’s worth a read be you blogger, article or novel writer.

…My creative beast is restless and hungry, and I’ve learned that if I starve it by arbitrarily limiting its routine, it’s not happy. It’s all well and good to cut the fat out of your life to make time for what’s important, but you can take it too far. By turning off the internet, I turned off my source of inspiration. I was trying to write in a vacuum….

ChangingMinds.org has a great, short essay on How to ask beautiful questions.
And begins by pointing at the common one-down practice.

…Often many people ask tough questions mainly to satisfy their ego of making others uncomfortable, cover up their lack of knowledge, or to impress others. Most discussions and arguments you observe are all about how someone outsmarted someone else by firing a smart question. Watching someone squirm gives a self congratulatory sadistic pleasure to many people like, “Hah, you should have seen that bozo’s face when I asked him that tricky question.”…

And then discusses the alternative.

…However, a beautiful question can be described in many ways. Here are a few ways to learn how to ask beautiful questions….

3. Beautiful questions create pleasantness and collaboration. It removes fear and extracts right answers even if the answer is bad news. Successful managers know how to get the right answers from employees by not being intimidating in their approach. Their objective is to solve an issue or a problem, and not get a mischievous pleasure by making people uncomfortable. Beautiful questions help you achieve that….

And closes with a great quote by Dorothy Nevill. Check it out.

Hat-tip to Conversation Agent (go see the image there)

“The moment of truth,
the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition.
Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning.
In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain,
of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness.
The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.”

[Arthur Koestler, British novelist, journalist]

This is, after all, how we constructively create - paying attention to the nearly invisible.

For example, Six Rules Doctors Need to Know
Rule 1: They don’t want to be at your office.
Rule 2: They have a reason to be at your office.

…On every visit I try to identify the real reason (or the real fear) that brings them to see me. I don’t end the visit until I have addressed that reason.

Rule 3: They feel what they feel….