Multitasking Divorce Communications

Media multitasking, or the use of multiple medias at one time, is something that anyone can easily do it without even realising it. The reason being simply because the media is everywhere, from the radio to the TV, to your phone. With all of this constant information being thrown in your face while you're trying to focus on other tasks, it can really mess with your ability to keep composed and centre your attention on one thing at a time. This can be especially detrimental when some of the media you are taking in is causing you to feel excess anxiety and stress. For lots of people going through a divorce, media multitasking can make it difficult to keep one's calm when trying to focus on divorce communications. 

With your mind so exhausted from media overload, you are left with less energy to make level-headed decisions when it comes to important matters concerning your divorce.  Lisa Brick, Journey Beyond Divorce Partner, describes the downside of media multitasking like this: “Instead of increasing clarity and productivity, multitasking increases the time it takes to complete tasks and reduces the quality of work accomplished, all while providing the illusion that doing more gets more done.” For a person going through a separation or divorce, Brick poses the question of how is one supposed to manage all of the other tasks they have going on throughout their day while being persistently bombarded with emails and text messages, particularly those coming from a former spouse or partner? She asks, "What would change for you if you were not exposing yourself to these 'hits' randomly in the midst of going about your day?"

In her article titled "Media Multitasking During Divorce: Productive or Destructive?", Brick recommends setting aside time at intervals each day to review emails, texts, and other correspondence. She explains that creating specified times to deal with the communications you receive will give you a chance to really concentrate on each communication at hand. When you're not continually picking up your phone or checking your email, you will also have more time to really centre your focus on the other work you are doing.  Brick makes the point that setting aside time to handle divorce communications will give you a better chance to properly evaluate each communication and formulate an appropriate response. 

Giving yourself the time to really focus on the communications and other information about to your divorce can make a big difference in how well you handle it. Along with creating time to focus specifically on this issues and its related correspondence, isolating it from your media resources can help ensure that you keep it from seeping into other parts of your day. A tool like the OurFamilyWizard® website helps you to do just this by containing your divorce communications and other important family-related information in a place that is completely separate from your other emails, text messages, instant messages, and social media. While OurFamilyWizard® alerts can keep you up to date on the new correspondence you receive, you can customise your alerts to be sent to you once a day so that you can address these issues at one scheduled time each day. Even if you prefer to be notified right as you receive new correspondence, you must log into the app to actually get all of the details about what you are receiving. This helps to eliminate the risk of a possibly upsetting message flashing across your phone's screen, forcing you to read it then and there.

Being able to set aside time to truly focus on the matters at hand concerning your divorce is ultimately up to you, and there are real benefits of doing so. Brick describes some of the immediate benefits such as increased sense to focus, increased ability to discern relevant from irrelevant information, and the ability to accomplish more in less time. Give yourself a chance to see just how effective it can be for you to set aside times to focus on your communications, particularly those related to divorce. Sign up for an OurFamilyWizard® account to help yourself separate your divorce communication from everything else going on in your day and focus on it when you need to.