My wife has taught four and five year olds for over 25 years now, and occasionally, I'm lucky enough to visit one of her classrooms and see her at work. When I do, I usually learn (or re-learn) something myself. During one visit, it struck me how smooth playtime was. You would think that a room full of five year olds would be a real beehive of activity; while the children were certainly displaying all of the energy and enthusiasm you would expect, they weren't flitting from one activity to the next. Since five year olds don't have the longest attention spans, I marveled, "How do you keep them so focused?"
"It's easy" she replied. "They know they're not allowed to start a new activity until they finish playing with the old one and put it away." Wow!
What a simple, but powerful lesson: Focus on one thing at a time and finish it before moving on to the next task. The children know they can't jump from working on a puzzle over to the sand table until they've finished, picked up all the pieces, put them back in the box and put it back on the shelf.
Thank you to @presentationzen on Twitter for lending me to this article by Michael A. Dalton. I am so guilty of multitasking and do not even begin to think about it. What effect's does it have on my ability to perform my job? How do I control it? The things we learned in elementary school seem so far away and so simple but often are the most important things in life. I need to make a more conscious effort to stay on task and "put it away" as the article says.
I find myself trying to multitask as I writing this post. Do not look over at the email or twitter tab. They will wait and still be there when i get to it.
Note to self: Complete one task and put it away before beginning another.
Posted via web from Reflexions
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment