In Life, Do You Perform Your Tasks in PARALLEL ? Or SERIALLY ?

In Life, Do You Perform Your Tasks in PARALLEL ?  Or SERIALLY ?

In life, how do you go about with your tasks ?  SERIALLY like the caboose and the freight trains ?  Or in parallel like the multi-processing environments in technology.  I don't intend to initiate a crash course in project management but having gone through project management through the years, that's the constant question that stomps the project manager right from Day-1.  Problem is, from Day-1 when the newborn baby was heard with that loud cry, we got oriented that doing thinks serially and sequentially is the way to go.

One misconception we need to rectify is this flawed understanding that parallel task management versus serial/sequential task management is better left for project managers and not for small business owners, students or even freelance workers.  This is a serious gap that needs to be corrected because our lives revolve around tasks.  You can run your own business but you still got tasks at hand.  You can be a student in the academe but surely you got in your hands enough To-Do tasks.

But unless you are working in a factory process that needs to be serially executed, performing tasks in parallel mode is always part of the equation.  Amanda Kreuser does a very good pitch @ https://www.inc.com/amanda-pressner-kreuser/run-your-personal-life-like-a-project-manager.html wherein she pitches that we need to run our personal life like a project manager [and we don't need to get trained as project managers].  As she admitted, prior to this pandemic, 'most evenings flew by in a flurry of activities...It felt like a million things were happening but almost nothing was getting done'.  As a realization, she decided to replicate the basic project management strategies she has been successfully performing at work.  Lo and behold, she admitted she 'almost immediately felt the impact'.  

Think about it, that typical factory environment where every single task has to be performed serially, sequentially.  That was not because it was their preference but rather, that's the process that needs to be followed in the factory.  Swing over to your life, please DON'T replicate that serial process unless that is warranted.

On the other hand, you don't have to be in a semi-conductor or automated environment for you to pursue tasks in parallel mode.  It all boils down to the situation at hand and, as always, the most basic question is this: which tasks can I perform with NO dependencies whereas which tasks I can't perform yet because of dependencies ?  Look back in your lives, isn't it so frustrating that some tasks that could have been done a month ago or weeks ago have now become URGENT tasks because you kept procrastinating and postponing performing it because you are in 'SERIAL Mode' ?

Erich Dierdorff said it all that time management is about more than just life hacks @ https://hbr.org/2020/01/time-management-is-about-more-than-life-hacks.  And Erich highlights the 3 A's for your time management to end up more likely in success than failure:  AWARENESS that time is a limited resource.  ARRANGEMENT which by itself means PLAN PLAN PLAN and ADAPTATION which translates to monitoring your activities.  Let's get onboard on this, folks.✅✅✅