Singletasking
Daniel | April 13, 2008“Smile, breathe and go slowly.”
-Thich Nhat Hanh
“Multitasking” is a buzzword we’re all familiar with - it (theoretically) means the ability to do several things at once. What it usually means is the ability to have several things going on at once, none of which get done as well as they should, and some of them get left half finished and forgotten.
What most people I come across seem to lack completely these days is the ability to single task. As a society, we’re always ready to answer the phone, respond to an e-mail or IM, listen to the radio or have the TV on while we do other things. As Yoda would say “Never our minds on where we are, on what we are doing!”. He’d be right.
My challenge for the week (feel free to try this with me) is to take at least one task a day - be it brushing my teeth, baking a loaf of bread, doing the dishes, washing the car or cooking dinner - and concentrate on only that task. The idea is to do that one task slowly, deliberately, in a focused manner and to do it completely - I’ll turn off my phone, mute the computer speakers, turn off the monitor, whatever I need to do to not be distracted, and I won’t allow anything to interrupt me until my task is complete.
The idea is to connect with the “now”, at least for a time, and use these tasks as a sort of meditation in mindfulness. I’ll post here in a month and let you know how it went, and what my impressions are. If you try this, even once, I’d love to hear your impressions in the comments!
You spelled his name wrong. It's Thich Nhat Hanh. Didn't
person | April 16, 2008 | 1:25 amYou spelled his name wrong. It’s Thich Nhat Hanh. Didn’t want to sound anal but I am.
I find this a very very hard task to accomplish mainly because people [I myself am guilty] - are not focused enough. We’re constantly overstimulated so we can’t keep our minds on one thing. Often though, it’s not always bad.
Here’s my extreme example. After vacuuming my room, I wanted to sit down at my desk and eat my orange. Unfortunately, my desk was a mess so I decided to clean it up. I was left with a bunch of textbooks I needed to sell, so I went on to eBay to list them. Then I cleared out my desk, wiped off the dust in obscure corners, and conveniently placed only items I would need [1 picture frame, pen holder]. THEN, I sat down and ate my orange while reading my Google Reader & listening to music. Good stuff. So I guess in wanting to get one thing done, I got a lot of tasks out of the way!
But I agree. Mindfulness is the way to go.
You are correct. I did manage to spell his
Daniel | April 16, 2008 | 11:10 amYou are correct. I did manage to spell his name wrong. Fixed now :)
I’ve experienced what you’ve described numerous times - it’s difficult to accept that the messy counter is perfect just as it is at the present moment that I am mindfully making my coffee. My mind keeps becoming distracted by the mess, and then agitated by the fact that I do not appear to be doing anything about the mess. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but there are times that by the end of whatever task I’m working mindfully on, I’m more annoyed and agitated than I was when I began.
Which usually leads to a chance to spend an extra few minutes on a loving kindness meditation lol