A few months ago my husband and I were watching a TV show on the brain on the National Geographic Channel. It was fascinating; they talked about concepts and then showed examples including giving the viewing audience various quizzes to prove their points. The one that really stuck with me was about the beloved habit of multi-tasking. Here was the challenge: watch the screen and count how many times the name or image of magician David Copperfield went across the screen. Okay … go! We sat and counted to ourselves and then it was over and they asked not only how many times his name and image had appeared but also whether we had seen the guy in the gorilla suit walk across the screen. No kidding!!! I was within one of the actual times they had flashed his name and photo but I had absolutely not seen a GORILLA walk across the screen. I turned to my husband who said that he had seen the gorilla but only because he had lost track and wasn’t paying attention to the name or image count any longer. We were both gob smacked. There, in an instant, the notion that we could effectively multi-task went out the window.
What I realized was that while we can do two things at once we can only do two things at once effectively if they don’t use the same part of our brain. I can make a meal and listen to the news as long as I don’t have to refer to a cookbook for the recipe. If I am reading the recipe I am not hearing the news program. The same goes for trying to have a conversation while reading email; something is going to suffer. While it doesn’t matter if I lose focus on the news while cooking it does matter if I lose focus on a conversation with a friend because I am trying to do two things at once.
Typically we multi-task because we believe that it will save us time to do so; yet all the evidence shows that this is not the case. The time we spend re-doing tasks that didn’t initially get our full attention far exceeds the time that we would have spent doing the task with full focus. While that is bad enough what is worse is the price we pay in relationships when we don’t give our full attention to the people with whom we are engaging. Most of us have been on the receiving end of a conversation where it became quite clear that we were coming in second to whatever it was the person on the other end of the phone was doing. There is a limit to the number of times that can happen without doing damage to the relationship.
What we may be less aware of is how joyful full focus can be. When we give our full attention to a task or a person we engage ourselves in such a way that we get all that there is to get from the encounter. Playing with a child becomes fun when we totally dive in, meet them at their level, and don’t think about how long we have to do this before getting back to “adult” stuff. The project for work becomes really engaging when we throw ourselves into it wholeheartedly and strive to do our best. Focus is its own reward. Focus means that we are using our brain as intended. Focus brings us fully into experiencing the present moment with all the richness that it contains.
So save the multi-tasking for folding the laundry and watching the news, for the important people and tasks in your life, FOCUS.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post please pass it on.
