In an effort to become more organized this year, I have been using Chris Perrow's "12 Steps to Organizing Success" Planning calendar.

I also use my write on wipe off calendar, Microsoft Outlook and post-it notes on my desk, but I have found that the Chris' calendar, along with helping me organize business tasks, offers some great tips and suggestions.

Until today.

First, please know that I think VERY highly of Chris and what she can accomplish for her customers - in fact, she is our guest speaker next week at the Women's Network Downtown Lunch in Akron. Hope you can make it!

Here is the comment I take exception to:

"Multi-tasking is counter productive! Research compiled by David Meyer of the University of Michigan revealed that people who regularly switch back and forth between two tasks may actually spend 50% more time on those tasks than if they worked on them separately. Your thought and your actions also need an assigned home and time."

I multi-task with every breath I take.

Getting kids up, packing lunches, baking cookies, proof reading an article, checking email and feeding the cat are just a few of the things I do AT THE SAME TIME every morning. Or some variation. Sometimes I'm not baking cookies but instead starting supper to put in the crock pot.

And I have to believe that most women out there are doing the same thing.

My 10 year old daughter is already getting the hang of it. She was late coming down for breakfast and I accused her of playing with the cat instead of getting dressed. She looked at me, blue eyes filling, and then said, "I was multi-tasking."

Okay, so maybe Chris has a point. I have burned those cookies on occasion.

But the fact remains that I bore EASILY and if I were to just work on a single project I would lose my creatively, my fresh approach.

If I'm working to find a slogan for a customer I'll brain dump for 15 minutes and then read some promotional material for another, totally unrelated customer, to help break up my thinking.

Oh I can talk about of both sides of my mouth, because there is a wonderful sense of completion when I list out my to-dos and start at the top working my way down, one and a time until they are all crossed off.

But in this hectic world - how can we survive without multi-tasking?

To NOT multi-task, for me, would mean watching the pot of water as it comes to a boil prior to dumping in the pasta. Instead, I could set the table, play a song on the piano and get the mail out of the mail box while that water heats up.

So where do you stand on the subject of multi-tasking - necessary or evil? Or necessary evil?