Surrendering to the single task in front of you

The word “multitasking” has been around only since the 1960s when we first found that computers could perform several functions at once. It was a marvel to behold. Since then, we’ve incorporated multitasking into our daily lexicon and decided that we, too are multitaskers.

But we’ve also had plenty of research that shows that humans, for the most part, are simply incapable of performing well doing many things at once. We are, by and large, single-task processors.

So many of us resist these facts. We want to believe that we can handle the email, and the phone, the project in front of us, and the interruptions from others, all while eating lunch and listening to music.

Maybe we can. Just not as well. And often, not as quickly. Still, some researchers believe that we can train our brains to handle many tasks at once.

Perhaps what we can hope to become really good at is being a quick-change artist. To be really good at what we do requires being completely focused on the task in front of us, and being able to switch from task to task capably.

Watch the people who always remember names and details, who absorb information and use it well, who are critical and analytical thinkers, and who have a keen sense for what works. Almost without fail, you’ll find someone who engages fully with what is right in front of her. No matter how menial the task or the low the rank of the person she is talking to, she is right there fully involved. And when the next thing comes, she’s right with it again.

It doesn’t matter if your task is running a school district or cleaning people’s teeth or teaching kids mathematics or selling a product or mothering a child or working at a deli, we all have competing demands for our time, attention, and care.

Since multitasking doesn’t really work (I know, except for you), we have to learn to put one thing down and pick something else up with excellent transitions and with laser-focus.  

You’re engaged with clients, then you’re finishing a report for a meeting, you’re presenting your ideas, and then you’re crunching data for analysis. The morning spins by. But the way that we transition can help us in our next task. Something as simple as a 10-second conscious inhale and exhale where you say in your mind, “Okay, done with that for now. Next!”

If we give each one of our tasks its time and place, chances are that each would be handled with more clarity and more finesse.

photo: Bart Everson

So I say if you’re going to write, write. And if you’re going to make calls, do that. And if you’re going to eat lunch, maybe you’d be more inclined to eat better if you really paid attention to what you were eating.

When you become a quick-change artist, you figure out how to give your full attention to whatever you are doing. If you simply have to eat lunch at your desk maybe you could pause every time you took a bite, look at your food, smell it, and say, “And now, I’m going to eat this food. Oh look, it is cold and crunchy and tart. Excellent.”

When you quick-change back to the work at your desk, you can fully be back to that work. Of course the best-case scenario is that you take your lunch out to the tree in the park and sit there and eat it. The reality is that when we do multitask, we not only don’t do our tasks as well, but they actually take us longer to do them because we have to refocus our energy so many times.

But I know how life works. I’ve got three kids at home. I run a business. I am thoroughly engaged in my life and I’ve got a million things going on at any given moment. I make dinner while I help kids with homework. I talk to clients about workshops while I answer my kid’s question patiently written on a scrap of paper: “Can I go to the library?”

And sometimes we have to do these things. Most of the time they work just fine. But more and more, I’m working to do one thing at a time.

If I am thinking about the seven hundred and fifty three other things that have to happen while I’m talking to a client, I’m not going to give that client the best I can. And I’m all about giving my best to whatever I’m doing. When I don’t? I’ve lost an opportunity to give the world something good. It’s lousy for the situation, a drag for others involved, and ultimately, doing less than my best just brings me down, too. So while I do my quick-change artist impression regularly, for the things that matter most, you’ll find my phone off, my email shut down, my door locked, and me doing my work. When I need my best, I give my full attention to what’s in front of me.

But even without such extreme measures (No phone? No email? No music. Wha??) we can bring some form of this kind of single-focus to everything we do. It may require surrendering to the task. It may mean some deep breathes while you quell the panic of ALL THAT MUST BE DONE so that you can concentrate on the one thing in front of you. It may just mean saying to yourself something like, “I’m here doing this now.” No matter how overwhelmed we are the only way forward is through the pile: do this thing, do it well, and then get to the next thing. And the next, and the next.

How about you? Do you consider yourself a great multitasker? How often are you doing just one thing? How do you move through what must be done? I’d love to hear your strategies.

Nothing like hanging out in criminal court to help you appreciate what works

I went to court this morning and watched the proceedings on several criminal cases. I was there to see what happened in the cases of the two young men who stole my car earlier this year.

One of my young thieves, as I’ve taken to calling them, was there with some people, probably his mother and sister.  He waived a hearing. As they were getting up to leave the courtroom, I wondered if I ought to jump up and follow them. I wanted to meet him, and his mother. But it didn’t seem like the right timing.

The other young man didn’t show. He blew off his court date. His mother called to say that he had hadn’t been around for a day and a half. This is the guy who already had one felony conviction by the time he was sixteen-years-old.

Before I knew he wouldn’t show, I sat in the courtroom for an hour or so, and listened to the mundane proceedings of a typical Monday morning criminal docket.

There was the jerk representing himself against the woman who was filing harassment charges. She was scared, but she answered the district attorney’s questions about dozens of unwanted phone calls, about the guy showing up at her work, about the morning she woke up to have the tires slashed on several vehicles in her driveway.  

When it came time to cross-examine the witness, the guy’s first question was, “How is your new grandchild?” The prosecutor objected and the judge sustained the objection. Please people, if you’re ever charged with a crime, get an attorney.

Then there was the group of young people who were charged with a number of burglaries. They looked young and scared, and they all dressed at least somewhat appropriately for a courtroom. I’ve spent a lot of time in courtrooms and I’m chagrined when defendants show up in t-shirts and jeans or worse. Nothing says, “I really don’t give a shit” more clearly.

Like the next guy who was charged with selling methamphetamines. He sported a scraggly few days of beard, a black crumpled t-shirt and jeans. Who knows, maybe he just doesn’t care.

It’s a tough world to stomach, the Monday morning criminal docket. It’s the stuff of could-have-beens and eye-rolling and grandmothers crying and mothers sitting beside their young ones, mostly men, and feeling… what? Sad and disheartened? Ashamed and embarrassed? Defiant and resentful? Maybe some of all of it.

And what about the young men? What about that guy in his twenties who was convicted this morning of two counts of battery and disorderly conduct after a drunken fight with a woman he knows. The one who says he was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and has lived with his mom, unemployed for the most part, since he dropped out of high school? When the judge says, “I want you to turn your life around,” what does that mean for this guy?

Is his mother helping him by giving him a place to live? Is he at all interested in changing his life?

The struggles of young people, and particularly, young men, have enormous consequences for our neighborhoods, our communities, and our country and world as a whole. Can we help young men find another path? Is it our responsibility? What can we do? How can we teach our young people to find some inner strength that will lead them to better things for themselves?

I was contemplating all these questions as I came home from court this morning. I came home to my peaceful, friendly block full of great neighbors and close community. And that’s when I saw him. One of my favorite neighbor guys, sitting in the sun, in the classic meditative pose. He’s just 12-years-old, but his life has certainly had some bumps and bruises. His brother was killed in a car accident two years ago, and that loss has been enormous for him.

But there he was, taking some time to do what his father and mother have taught him. To sit quietly. To become less reactive. To gather peace. To know himself well. 

When the world comes knocking at his door again—as it certainly will—with pain or temptation to do something stupid, or an opportunity to do something he knows is wrong, this young man will have some resources to fall back on. He’ll have a better ability to know himself, to not have to prove something, to stay clear about what is right.

I don’t imagine that everyone will teach their young people to meditate. But what a different world it would be if we did.

In any case, today, after the criminal docket, the sight of my young neighbor sitting steady in the sun was a beautiful sign of hope. I’ll take it.  

Broken, but beautiful still

Of all the problems of the world, relationship trouble can cut to our core like little else. And if the twenties and thirties are the ages of new love, weddings, babies, and home-building, then the forties and fifties are the ages of disillusionment, despair, disentangling, and yes, that other big D.

I remember my own divorce and how I truly thought that I might die from a broken heart. I rationally knew that people recover, and some even thrive. I am, at my core, a thriving type. But I was so distraught (what is it with D words?) that I couldn’t feel secure or stable. I was just miserable.

I had worked so damn hard to have my family work and now I was going to have to share my kids’ time with this guy who couldn’t stand to be married to me anymore? What kind of a raw deal was this? And, and, and….I would be alone for the rest of my life! I would be sad and lonely!

I remember a woman who had lived through these treacherous decades responding to me at the time, “Oh, you just never know. People get divorced, but they also fall in love again and they keep on living. You’ll see over time, everything just changes.”

Of course she was right. And I wouldn’t have understood just how sad and lonely I was in my marriage if I hadn’t had the chance to leave it. My divorce has been the best thing that ever happened to me and my children.

And yet, it was hard to see at the time. I had glimpses of something good to come. Like when one friend said, “Don’t turn your marriage into some kind of golden era. It wasn’t that great.” Yep. When you’re committed to something, sometimes it facilitates a blind eye towards things that don’t work. When a lot isn’t working and people are suffering, it is time for something to shift. That doesn’t necessarily mean getting divorced, but for some people, it’s a reasonable answer to an impossible question.

The other day I was driving along country roads and a saw a patch of thistle along the fence. I stopped and asked the owner if I could pick some. She sort of snorted and said, “You can take as much of them as you want.”

Nobody likes thistle. They are prickly and sharp, pointed and jagged. If they take hold they can spread like crazy. It can be extreme. And they hurt.

But if you let the thistle grow all the way through the painful, prickly mess, the blossoms are rare and exquisite.  Their tall, winding stems give way to Dr. Seussian blossoms. The flowers are fluffy tufts of fuchsia. They are inspiring.

When some kind of heartache in our lives cuts us to the core, the thistle can remind us that pain can bring deeper understanding, true acceptance, and a life that doesn’t foster anxiety and stress. Pain can be a doorway to more freedom.

So I picked a bunch of thistle for a friend in pain. So maybe she could see the need for the pain more clearly, so that she could remember that beauty that is surely coming.  

And today, I returned and picked another batch and put them on my kitchen table. I didn’t get hurt doing the picking. For now, I’ll just enjoy the beauty.  

The community send-off

 Last night, I took my kids to a graduation party for one of the spectacular young women in my town who has completed high school and is ready to launch into the larger world.

The party was just outside of town on the family’s beautiful ridge top farm. Perched on the top of hill, you can see the valley stretched out before you. It was sunny and still, and in the seventies. Kids ran in gaggles, jumping on the two trampolines, swinging and climbing on the playground equipment or the gigantic tree beside it. Adults and kids alike played volleyball and swam in the pool.

We had strawberry shortcake that a local Amish family made for the party: they grew the strawberries, baked the shortcake. We had premium cream from Organic Valley. Yes, they are the biggest organic coop in the country, but around here, they’re just our neighbors and friends and make the best cream.

At one point, the graduate stepped to the small stage and sang some songs, bringing up various friends and family to sing with her. With her parents, she sang the Dixie Chick’s “Wide Open Spaces.”

My five-year-old was running around, and when she got hurt, someone who knows her (almost everyone there) picked her up and brought her to me. I brought a three-year-old to his father when he couldn’t find him in the crowd.

And we all watched, as we’ve done through the years, the kids slide down the roof of the barn. Yes, the barn.  

We looked at the photo spread of the graduate, and many of us could remember or were there for many of the events of her life. She grew up with us. We’ve gotten older with her.

So we gathered to mark this moment with her, with her parents, and with the rest of her family. We gathered to remember what it’s like to strike out on your next big adventure in life, and how much support and love it takes to do it well. We gathered to be with all the people in the community who make up the years of picnics and parties and plays and concerts and camping trips and potlucks together. Who make up a life together.

This time of year, one of the biggest challenges is keeping up with all the excellent young people who are branching out into the world. What a great moment in a life. What a key time for a community to gather and say, “You did it.”

And as we send them off to the next thing, we send our care and commitment to keep building life with them. Maybe from a different proximity. Maybe with a different relationship. But whether one runs off to Europe and another runs off to college, I am so happy to be a part of a place where I suspect that each graduate knows that there will continue to be a home base. A group of adults and families ready to welcome them back.

It’s not that things don’t change; they do all the time. Kids grow up, parents divorce, some people move, some people return. Through it all, there’s a group of people who have built a world together. As a young adult contemplates the larger world, it helps to know that there’s a big group of people who love and support her. And as a family sends one child off, it helps to have a big group of people who love and support them. A group that comes together, happy to keep marking time, singing songs, eating good food, and moving along together.