Meet New York's Biggest Multitaskers!
Matcha in the shower! FaceTiming while walking!! More!!!
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Issue #116 of CAFÉ ANNE!
I got a lot of feedback on last week’s feature, “Who Still Wears a Suit in NYC?” Many folks said they’d love to dress up more but hesitate because no one else seems to be dressing up, and they’re afraid to look odd.
To this I’d respond with an observation from menswear consultant and dedicated suit-wearer Reginald Ferguson that I didn’t include in the original article: “People don't look at me askance because I have a suit on,” he said. “If anything, they admire me because I have a suit on. And I think it's partially because they don't have the guts to do it themselves.”
There was also a lot of buzz around Mr. Ferguson’s mention of the casual wear adopted by tech bros, and how most of them don’t realize that Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie is a Brunello Cucinelli. The mention prompted several readers to do some online research, and just like me, they were amazed to discover that yes, you can spend $2,295 on a cotton hooded sweatshirt. Hurrah!!!
“Just looked up Brunello Cucinelli hoodies,” wrote reader Robert S. in Brooklyn. “I could maybe afford the replacement drawstring.”
My main take-away from writing the story was a renewed commitment to avoid dressing like a schlub in public. I’d recently gotten into the habit of doing my grocery shopping in sneakers and yoga pants because the supermarket is on the way home from the gym. Last week, I changed back into my street clothes before leaving the gym and was once again cruising the food aisles in a skirt and heels. Much better!
In other news, huge Metro-North/LIRR fare-drop shoutouts to our newest paid subscriber Ethan in Brooklyn and also to Philip W. in the UK for his gift via Paypal. That’s enough $$$ for, well, I still can’t afford the reduced-fare monthly pass. But who wants to leave the city anyhow?
I am very excited for this week’s issue, of course. I’ve got mini-profiles of three of the city’s biggest multitaskers, and these ladies are truly amazing. Please enjoy.
Regards!
Anne
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FEATURE
Meet New York’s Biggest Multitaskers!
Last fall, I conducted a little experiment—a week without multitasking. For seven days, I did just one thing at a time. No reading while eating, no podcasts while cleaning, no texting while walking. And you know what? I loved it!
While I've backslid a bit, I've pretty much maintained my commitment to mono-tasking. I figure if I don't have time to give something my full attention, I don't have the time for it, period.
There's a lot of research to support this choice. By now, everyone's heard the news that it's impossible to literally focus on two things at once. Each shift exacts a cognitive "switching cost" which slows us down, reducing productivity.
That's my experience for sure. But maybe I'm just a terrible multitasker! I have difficulty talking while walking down the street, for instance, because I get caught up in the conversation and walk into traffic.
Meanwhile, I keep hearing from folks who claim they actually perform better when doing things at once.
This got me wondering. If I'm at the idiot end of the multitasking bell curve, shouldn't there be multitasking genius at other end of the spectrum? It'd be weird if there weren’t!
Last week, I posted an online query seeking “NYC's Biggest Multitasker" and was pleased to connect with not one, but three local go-getters who are committed to task juggling—and proud of it! Please enjoy.
Nikki Beauchamp
I was delighted when Nikki Beauchamp conducted our Tuesday morning Zoom call while speeding through Central Park, walking her dog.
Walking from her Upper East Side office to a sales meeting on the Upper West Side, she held the phone up the entire time so we could chat face-to-face. She never once tripped over a curb.
"I'm a big fan of walking and doing other things," said Ms. Beauchamp, a NYC real estate broker with Sotheby's International Realty. "Taking calls—I do that a lot. Or I dictate emails and articles as I walk."
"I'd like to be focused on one thing at a time, but it's generally impossible, given my line of work," she continued. "I always have a device in my hand. Or technically, I always have two phones. So even if I'm on a call with one phone, I can be searching for things or noticing when an email comes up."
She once conducted a Zoom call from a dressing room in the middle of a shopping excursion. "I do lots of conference calls at Costco," she added.
The native New Yorker said her day typically starts at 4:30 am. She watches the news while checking her phone and email, drinking tea and reading the paper.
Next, she hops on her Peloton bike, which she's fitted with a spinning tray. The rotating carousel on the handlebars holds a notebook and pen, two phones and a laptop so she can switch between tasks as she pedals.
At the office, she likes to have her desktop computer, iPad and two phones in front of her at all times, along with Remarkable tablet for taking notes.
Ms. Beauchamp said she likes the idea of taking a lunch break, but often eats at her desk, or forgets lunch entirely. "Now that the weather is nice again, I try to at least go sit outside for a change of scenery," she said. "But I'll listen to a podcast, or try to read something on my Kindle."
After lunch, she's typically got several showings and property previews, or an open house—followed by additional evening showings.
"I try to get home by eight if at all humanly possible, but that almost never happens," said Ms. Beauchamp, who also serves on several nonprofit boards, plays classical clarinet and piano, and volunteers with Destination Imagination.
She tries to reserve several nights a week for dinner meetings or a show—occasions she savors because it gives her a reason to turn off her devices.
By now, Ms. Beauchamp was nearing her destination at a townhouse on West 74th Street. I asked what she does on her nights off.
"I may want to mindlessly watch reality TV," she said. "So I might tune into TLC. I may tweet about some of the shows that I'm watching. I may put on the news, and I'm usually catching up on emails and anything I didn't get to during during the day."
She likes to be asleep by 10 pm. "Some days it happens, some days it doesn't," she said.
The night before, for example, she was up until 1:30 am with a West Coast client. "We had some complicated stuff that we had to talk through," she said.
Ms. Beauchamp had now arrived at her destination, and I didn't want to make her late for her sales meeting, so I asked her to send me some stats on her phone use.
She emailed the next day. "Average daily screen time is probably around 14 hours," she wrote. "Calls: probably around 12-15, not necessarily including unscheduled calls. Meetings: 3-6. Emails: hundreds—no exact account, but probably 500-ish."
Can you imagine? Maybe you can! Maybe this is you!
Ms. Beauchamp said she'd like to reduce her multitasking, but her clients around the world expect her to be available, and she's found it’s necessary just to keep up.
"What ends up happening is that when I stopped, then there's a whole laundry list of things I missed out on," she said. "For me, it's a necessary evil."
Hope Alcocer
The biggest multitasking stereotype is likely the mom doing four things at once. But marketing consultant Hope Alcocer takes it to a whole new level.
When we met on Zoom last week, she told that the evening before, while her three stepkids were playing in the other room, she was simultaneously making dinner, creating her grocery list, listening to a podcast about how to stop controlling others and answering emails related for a new client signing. She was also texting her siblings to coordinate a family member’s medical care.
"What was for dinner?" I asked.
"Spaghetti," she said, "Which is pretty basic. I wish it was something more detailed, because that would sound more impressive!"
I was plenty impressed. As I told Ms. Alcocer, I suspect there are some natural-born multitaskers, and she seems to be one of them.
"A lot of the science tells us that multitasking doesn't make you productive, that you end up kind of half-assing everything. But I don't find that to be true with me," said Ms. Alcocer. "I love it! It keeps me not bored in what could be a mundane life as a mom and wife and business owner."
Perhaps it runs in the family.
"I grew up watching my mom with two different planners and listening to her self-improvement podcasts or television while making our meals," she said. "My mom has home videos of me walking around at, like, five or six years old, with my notepad, my pretend planner and my pretend phone, cooking dinner. So I was emulating my mom-the-multitasker at very young age."
She finds it very satisfying.
"I felt fulfilled," said Ms. Alcocer of her whirlwind evening in the kitchen. "I was getting stuff done. And I got it all done. I got all my emails done, the schedules made, dinner was made. The kids were in bed on time. Maybe some people need to have the constant challenge. And I'm someone like that."
"It sounds like you almost get high off it," I said.
"I do. It's euphoric," she agreed.
Ms. Alcocer, who commutes to her Manhattan office from New Jersey, says her day starts with getting the stepkids ready for school, coordinating her schedule with her husband and checking her work email followed by time perusing the four different inspiration and self-help daily readers she keeps going—often during her Peloton workout.
I told her about Ms. Beauchamp's Peloton routine with the spinning tray.
"Now that is talent!" laughed Ms. Alcocer. "Wow! I have a little desk thing for my reading, or my phone, but that's amazing! I'd be afraid I'd fall off if I had that many distractions."
Ms. Alcocer takes the PATH train to work at the firm she recently launched to support female entrepreneurs, Wonder Women Media, and uses her 30-minute commute to apply for contracts and send more emails. "Daydreaming while listening to my earbuds isn't a productive use of time, as I am trying to grow my business rather quickly. That free time is so valuable!" she said.
The multitasking continues at the office.
"I love to listen to an audiobook or a podcast while I work, and I'm able to do both," she said. "I also have a little notepad so that if I hear something that really resonates, I'll write it down."
The other day, for example, she was writing client proposals while listening to infertility podcasts and dialing into a Zoom meeting for a codependency caregivers group.
"I just love having 50-to-75 people on the Zoom screen while I'm working, just hearing their stories," she said.
I told her I could not imagine trying to write while listening to a podcast.
"If I were writing a blog post or an article, I would put on music for that," she said. "But for an administrative task, I'm okay with having that chatter.”
"So you're very intentional," I said. "And it sounds like you have a great awareness of what you're able to do and what you're not."
"I'm always analyzing what I'm doing and why I'm doing it," she agreed.
But that doesn't mean it’s easy to stop.
Most evenings, after the stepkids are in bed and she's finished her final hour of work, she heads upstairs to unwind. "I need that time to quiet my brain," she said.
Typically, she'll light a candle and open a self-help book.
"But then I'm like, 'Should I also stretch?'" she said. "'And work on my abs?' And before I know it, I'm reading while doing leg work on the floor on my yoga mat."
I asked if she can just lay still and relax.
"I try to do that as often as I can," she said. "I can do it more. I've really been trying to do that with this whole fertility journey—just visualizing what I want my life to look like. I have affirmations right by my bed. I'll close my eyes and focus on those. And then, if I really am feeling anxious, because I struggle with anxiety and depression, I do have to lay there and just pause. But I can't do it for very long. It's hard to lay still, for me, because it's like, 'What will I think? What will come to me?"
I told her I could relate. There have been times in my life when I got a huge rush from multitasking and getting a zillion things done—knowing I was for sure trying to avoid some painful feelings.
"We want to be always on because maybe we don't want to face the music," Ms. Alcocer agreed. "But as far as what makes me productive, it's doing these multiple things at once."
Her day typically ends with her nightly routine of brushing and flossing while updating her productivity app and coordinating her family's four activity calendars.
I mentioned how I once caught myself brushing my teeth and cleaning the kitchen sink at the same time—for no good reason.
"Okay!" she said. "So you get it! Why can't we just do one thing? But those two minutes when you're supposed to brush—you know what I can get done in those two minutes while brushing my teeth? I still have my other hand to review my next day!"
Kee Kee James
Tattoo artist Kee Kee James started our interview offering a self-diagnosis.
"I have to be doing something all the time," she said. "And I think that's got a lot to do with, like, ADHD. Totally undiagnosed ADHD! I am constantly doing six things at once."
Case in point—the recent renovation of her Chinatown tattoo shop, Vacation Forever, which she opened in March.
Ms. James handled the renovation with the help of two hired hands, putting in twelve-hour days of manual labor for six weeks straight without a day off.
While painting, drilling and tiling, she was on the phone hiring a trash hauler, renewing her tattoo license, chatting with her lawyer, ordering Wi-Fi, coordinating with vendors, booking guest artists, coordinating with her intern…etc., etc., etc.
"Most people would try to take care of that stuff at their desk and then they would go paint," I observed.
"I had less than a month-and-a-half to renovate, so I had no choice," said Ms. James. "There was no option to not be doing six things at once."
“Was it stressful?”
"It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life!" she said. "And I also went through a breakup halfway through."
"Why didn't you just delay the store opening to save yourself the stress?" I asked.
"I could have," she said. "But I'm kind of like a bull in a china shop. When I have my eyes set on something, I get it done."
Now that the shop is open (and getting a lot of business!) Ms. James, who moved here from Sydney in 2017, says her day typically starts when she wakes at 8 am, eats breakfast and hits the gym. While on the Stair-master, she replies to emails, posts on Instagram and TikTok, or FaceTimes with her cousin in Australia.
"And then in the shower, I always take a matcha in there so that I'm doing two things," she said.
"You drink your matcha in the shower?" I said. "Hot or cold?"
"Hot," said Ms. James.
At this point it was hard to talk because I was laughing so hard. It took some effort to ask the next question: "Have you ever accidentally drunk your shampoo?"
"No, luckily not," said Ms. James. "But while multitasking, I have accidentally brushed my teeth with sunscreen."
Ms. James, who commutes to her shop from Ridgewood, Queens, makes two concessions to mono-tasking. First, she enjoys giving her full attention to a book.
"And while I'm tattooing, I can't do anything else," she said. "I have to be in the moment. I've become a very, very fast tattooer because I don't like taking too long. I try and slow down and take my time, but I can't do it. I get so bored. And I make more mistakes when I'm slow."
Between tattoos, she's planning events like the shop’s monthly drink-and-draw evening, tending her social media profiles and managing the store’s gallery and retail space.
Ms. James says she's been very busy since she was eight years old. She loved reading in her family’s backyard overlooking a golf course while selling Coke and golf balls to the golfers through a hole in the fence.
"And then my dad was like, 'Why don't we start selling beer?'" she recalled. "And I was like, 'Hell, yeah! Selling beer with my dad!’”
She made $2000 that summer and never looked back. In her early twenties, she opened an art gallery in Sydney and ran music festivals. "We were constantly doing multiple things at once, and the high from that was just the best thing ever," she said.
"So you've been after that feeling ever since?" I asked.
"Yes, that's why I kind of liked doing the renovation," she said. "Now, having the shop actually open is a very slow life.”
While she’s already mulling an expansion or second location, Ms. James does give herself an occasional break.
"If I don't have a project that I need to get done, then I kind of let myself do whatever I want," she said. "Which is rotting in bed."
"You said ‘rotting in bed?’"
"Yeah."
"So you're all in or all out," I observed.
"Yes, but then I get guilty and start again," she said. "Because I want to live a very, very, very big life."
A couple days later, after I wrote up this story, I sent it to Ms. James to review for errors. She replied and said it was fine. Her follow-up email came ten minutes later. “One thing to change: our drink-and-draw is monthly,” she wrote. “I’m reading this while walking to an exhibition, haha.”
CAFÉ ANNE is a free weekly newsletter created by Brooklyn journalist Anne Kadet. Subscribe to get the latest issue every Monday!
Good article, Anne!
I'm suspicious of multitaskers. I think they are doing more than one thing at once, but I also think they're doing those things poorly. When I was in my late 20s, I expressed this view to some younger coworkers in the newsroom. I told them it was impossible to write a good story, while messing around on social media, chatting with their cubicle-mate, and doing several other things. They called me an old man. I was fine with that. Then I told them that we should check the data a month from now at our monthly metrics meetings. Let's see who puts out more stories, who has the most stories in the top ten, and who garners the most total page views. I crushed the kids by a country mile. They made a million excuses. One of them even said I was a better reporter! Well, um, OK but if that's your defense of multitasking, what are you even doing with your time?
One other multitasking anecdote. My wife is a proud multitasker. She was on a call and working on a budget when her sister texted her to say that she needed to get home to Florida ASAP because their mom was sick. She booked a flight and a hotel all while doing a bunch of other stuff at work. She then emailed me the reservations. The flight was fine -- not the best price, not the best time, but she got the dates and destination right, so no complaints there. But the hotel? She had booked us at a nudist resort. We are not nudists. At that point, I took a pause on my work, canceled the reservation, and booked us at a hotel with a strict no shoes, no shirt, no service policy.
Wow, hats off to these ladies.
I multitask and hate myself for it because I'm one of those folks who don't do it well because -- sorry, just had an idea for a Facebook post that I'm now writing up while typing this comment, plus I'm also reading Mike Sowden's latest Everything is Amazing while also lifting weights and -- oh, crap! I just dropped a twenty-pound barbell on my foot and I'm sorry, but what newsletter is this again?