Sunday, September 26, 2010

Productive Multitasking

Yesterday, shortly after noon, I posted the following status on facebook: “Paul E. Vagnoni is listening to TRadio and watching the Badgers while he organizes and burns his CDs onto iTunes. Who says men can't multi-task?” Surprisingly, there were no smart ass comments; just four “Likes” (Thanks Jill, Judi, Gus and Sue). Seriously though, I was actually multitasking. Not that this was the first time that I’ve done more than one thing at the same time. To be honest, on any given Saturday I am listening to the radio while watching a game on TV as I do something on the computer. But this Saturday was different – I was being productive!

Allow me to explain.

I had been watching the Wisconsin Badgers play the Austin Peay Governors since 11:00 am. At noon, as I do on most Saturdays, I tuned the radio to my friend Jim Selovich’s entertaining show, TRadio. This was nothing too unusual. It’s what I had started doing about an hour before the Badgers game that made my multitasking truly productive.

At 10:00 I had decided to organize and make a list of all of my CDs. Really they were fairly organized, but I had wanted to create a list for some time. So I pulled the first bunch off of the shelf. What do you know? All eighteen of them were The Who!

What I did next really kicked the productivity level up a notch. Not only did I create a list on my MacBook, I also opted to burn some of my favorite songs onto iTunes. Not only was this productive, it was also time consuming.

By 5:00 pm I had watched the Badgers destroy Austin Peay, listened to Tradio and had started watching the Yankees and the Red Sox game. Oh ya, the productive part. I had cataloged 102 of my CDs and burned enough songs to push my song total to 425 on iTunes. Thing is, I was only about halfway done.

I decided the rest could wait for another “productive” multitasking day. Now it was time to see what I had recorded so far.

A lot of you know that I love The Who. They are easily my favorite band ever. So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that I had sixteen R.E.M. albums. Here they are: Automatic For The People, Dead Letter Office, Document, Eponymous, Everybody Hurts, Find The River, Green, Life’s Rich Pageant, Monster, Murmur, New Adventures In Hi – Fi, Out Of Time, Radio Song (Single), Reckoning, Reconstruction Of The Fables, The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite.

What was even more amazing was that my playlist for R.E.M. was larger than the one for The Who. The playlist for The Who had 29 songs. What about R.E.M.? Check this out.

1. Bang And Blame – Monster
2. Begin The Begin – Life's Rich Pageant
3. Burning Down – Dead Letter Office
4. Can't Get There From Here – Fables Of The Reconstruction
5. Catapult – Murmur
6. Crush With Eyeliner – Monster
7. Cuyahoga – Life's Rich Pageant
8. Disturbance At The Heron House – Document
9. (Don't Go Back To) Rockville – Reckoning
10. Driver 8 – Fables Of The Reconstruction
11. Everybody Hurts – Automatic For The People
12. Everybody Hurts [Live] – Find The River (Single)
13. Exhuming McCarthy – Document
14. Fall On Me – Life's Rich Pageant
15. Femme Fatale – Dead Letter Office
16. Find The River – Automatic For The People
17. Find The River – Find The River (Single)
18. Finest Worksong – Document
19. Gardening At Night – Dead Letter Office
20. Get Up – Green
21. Half A World Away – Out Of Time
22. I Am Superman – Life's Rich Pageant
23. I Believe – Life's Rich Pageant
24. It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) – Eponymous
25. King Of Comedy – Monster
26. Love Is All Around – Radio Song (Single)
27. Man On The Moon – Automatic For The People
28. Maps And Legends – Fables Of The Reconstruction
29. Moral Kiosk – Murmur
30. Nightswimming – Automatic For The People
31. The One I Love – Document
32. Orange Crush – Green
33. Pale Blue Eyes – Dead Letter Office
34. Perfect Circle – Murmur
35. Pop Song 89 – Green
36. Pretty Persuasion – Reckoning
37. Radio Free Europe – Murmur
38. So. Central Rain – Reckoning
39. Stand – Green
40. Strange Currencies – Monster
41. Talk About The Passion – Murmur
42. There She Goes Again – Dead Letter Office
43. Tongue – Monster
44. Toys In The Attic – Dead Letter Office
45. Untitled – Green
46. Voice Of Harold – Dead Letter Office
47. Wendell Gee – Fables Of The Reconstruction
48. What's The Frequency, Kenneth? – Monster
49. Wolves, Lower – Dead Letter Office
50. You Are The Everything – Green

As legendary softball umpire Ernie Pascucci would say, “Unbelievable!” A whopping 50 songs totaling over three hours of listening pleasure. I was astounded to say the least.

I am anxious to see what secrets are uncovered when I tackle the rest of my collection. Who would have thought that multitasking could be revealing as well as productive? Until next time…from the booth.

2 comments:

Sue said...

Well done. Surprised you have more R.E.M. than The Who ! What are you going to 'dig up' next from your collection? Until next Saturday ?

Paul E. Vagnoni said...

Thanks Sue! I'm not quite sure what I will uncover. There are about 100 more to go…