Chasing Two Hares

Our quote of the day comes to us via Gretchen Rubin at The Happiness Project, and falls under the category of ancient wisdom for modern times:

"He who chases two hares will catch neither."
 -Publius Syrus

I've written before about the false promise of multitasking, the seductive idea that we can do more in less time by doing two (or more!) things at once.  The truth, unfortunately, is that our brains aren't wired that way.  Modern brain research continues to discover that human attention cannot be divided and still perform at the highest level.  We are fooling ourselves if we think we are boosting our output by multitasking.

Publius Syrus figured out in the first century BC what our modern scientists are explaining in detail today:  if you want to catch two hares, you have to start by catching one hare.  Chasing two at a time will not get you to your goal faster.

Have a long to-do list?  Pick the most important item that you can do right now, and do it.  Then move on to the next one.  Don't be tempted to do more than one thing at a time--you'll get more done, and what you do will be done better, and you'll be happier for it.