create rhythm in the workplace

There are two types of people - who would like to do multiple things at the same time vs. who would like to focus on one thing at a time. For example, for the first type, they can handle searching web pages, reading, chatting with friends through MSN, and cooking at the same time, but for the second type, at any moment of time, they can just do one thing, or else they will mess things up. The first type means efficiency, and they need to plan things very well to combine things with different paces together. During the time of baking, they chat with their friends through instant messages; During the time waiting for friends' responses, they can search for webpage; During the time waiting for web pages to come up, they even be able to do some readings. We call the first type as multi-threaded, the second as single-threaded.

So for the first type, they seem to try their best to fill any moment they can spare, by doing this, they seem to take the best advantage of time; as for the second type, there is time for learning, time for thinking, time for relaxing and time for cooking. For most of the time, we are familiar with and encouraged to be the first type - that's our traditional image of being busy and people tend to appear busy. If you close your eyes and tell other people you are busy because you are thinking, I bet most people will laugh and think it is an excuse of being lazy.

It is believed in computer science, multi-threaded is obviously more efficient and advanced than single-threaded computers. But the problem is we are not computers, besides doing things people tell us to do, we also create ideas and things to do. To me, these two types mean different rhythms of life, and single-threaded has its special beauty for us to explore, and maybe have something to do with creation of new ideas which, although, I am not so sure at this moment yet. Anyway, it is fun to look into it...

People have many different types of mental and pysical abilities. Good arrangement of them can help the development of these different abilities, wheras bad arragnement will damage these abilities. You can not use one ability too much for too long a time, that will make us lose interest and concentration, and feel tired, and be less efficient. Once you feel tired, it will take extremely long time for you to recover. For example, you can not do reading the same thing for too long. You may want to concentrate on other different things for a while, which may totally have nothing to do with your reading. The more it distracts you from the first action, the better it is for you come back to focus on the first action again. Here it is a play of contrasts. Some play it well and have developed all abilities very well, and these abilities are reciprocate with each other; Some play it bad, and end up with negative effects. What principles can help us to play it well is unknown yet.

I still remember a manager said, "It is to play kid show with plates(employees), and my job is to keep them going round and round, and never stop ". I believe that is a typical thing for most of the work places. Employers like to see their employees busy with something, for example, gazing at the screen and typing on the keyboard. Few will feel good if they see some employees sitting there with their eyes closed, which will usually be taken as being lazy, and leave bad impression. For the most of the time, employees don't know what to do if they feel tired, because the work place is designed for working, not for relaxing. But we do need to relax one in a while. Furthermore, we can take this relaxing time as resources to be used, to turn them into some constructive things....

What these things are for the work place? I don't know yet....