3
Your Mind
MYTH
Multitasking demonstrates competence.
REALITY
Singletasking demonstrates discipline and focus.
Focus and simplicity. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean, to make it simple. It is worth it because then you can move mountains.
STEVE JOBS
As noted, singletasking means taking control of your environment and your mind. Singletasking is not only what you do in the world; it is also about developing willpower.
If you meet someone and instantly forget his name, there’s a solid chance your brain wasn’t present when he said “Hector” because you were preoccupied with other matters entirely. The inability to concentrate on another person when being introduced or holding a conversation is evidence of an undisciplined cerebellum. What I call the Scattered Brain Syndrome (SBS) is at least partially attributable to the fact that we are hesitant to be alone with our thoughts.
Do you consciously manage your thoughts, perceptions, and reactions? Or do you squander your brain waves thinking about how much better life would be if external factors changed? Do you allow a zillion thoughts to zing through your head simultaneously? Or do you choose how to direct your attention as you glide gracefully through your day?
Practicing singletasking means taking back the reins and setting your own agenda.
The temptation to multitask is heightened when we feel beholden to the perceived demands or presumed expectations of others, rather than to our own priorities. This is often linked to an anxiety-inducing desire to be valued.
Much has been written, including here, about the challenges of external stimuli. Devices can be alluring, seducing us to ditch the Singletasking Principle. We will explore how to manage those distractions. Yet we must also address our internal response to the media, smartphones, and tablets.
Assume responsibility for how you process stimuli. For many, the ever-expanding multimedia environment is just the latest excuse to avoid looking within. It is all too easy to replace inward examination with external distractions. As popular comedian Louis C. K. observed, “People are willing to risk taking a life and ruining their own because they don’t want to be alone for a second, because it’s so hard.”1
Are you addressing or avoiding real-life challenges? How much time each week do you allocate for personal development, compared to the time you spend online? Beyond controlling your devices, control your mind.
It’s not so easy to get right. Start in bite-sized morsels.
Many people find it very challenging to simply think. Creating a structure for your reflection time can make it easier. I journal for ten to fifteen minutes a day because writing helps me assess what I’m thinking. For some, taking a walk clears the head. Others say devoting just a few minutes to meditation makes the entire day go more smoothly. Work with your natural preferences. Consider what you enjoy and see whether you can implement a mindfulness practice. Even five minutes a day is worthwhile.
Another approach to focusing your mind is simply this:
Decide what matters most to you in a given situation, and commit.
Chapter 7 (“Home Sweet Home”) expands on additional ways to refresh your mind, enabling clearer thinking and stronger singletasking.
Shrinkage
Your reward for reading this deeply into the book (it’s a brief book; don’t let it go to your head) is to learn an astonishing scientific finding about the brain. It also happens to be one of the most compelling reasons I’ve come across for mellowing the heck out.
Overloading yourself with too many competing stimuli shrinks the brain.
The prefrontal cortex shrinks from the stress of constant overload. The amygdala takes over, flooding the brain with negative emotions such as fear, aggression, and anxiety. As gray matter shrinks, we become cognitively impaired.2 Doing too much results, quite literally, in being unable to think clearly. Extreme busyness is associated with decreased brain tissue in areas responsible for regulation of thoughts and feelings.
MRIs reveal images of the brain struggling between competing tasks.3 The brain is overwhelmed by dueling demands. Attempting to multitask releases cortisol, the “stress hormone,” diminishing the ability to process information. Stress associated with trying to multitask shrinks brain neurons, reduces problem solving, and decreases emotional regulation, resilience, and impulse control.4
My advice to you? Don’t sweat it.
Immersion
Immersing oneself in an experience means designating full attention to the task at hand. When fully engaged in a task you enter a flow state, a concept highlighted in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.5 Deep task absorption results in a state of flow—being engrossed in an activity to the point where one achieves a higher than usual level of competence.
Precisely when total immersion is likely to occur depends on your personal style and interests. Flow can arise from engaging in the visual arts, athletics, music, dance, cooking, reading, hiking, crafts and hobbies, volunteer work, or mental challenges such as gaming. Your own flow experiences may even include, say, stamp collecting (if you don’t have much going on in your life).
Task-switching wipes out the possibility of a flow experience.
Multitasking personifies a monkey mind. The concept of monkey mind originated in Buddhism and refers to an unsettled, restless, inconsistent, confused, or uncontrolled mind. Such a state is the antithesis of flow or immersion. Flow requires a state of singletasking.
Absorption in a task increases creativity and confidence, resulting in superior outcomes. Task immersion evokes:
Energy and well-being
Positivity and good humor
Contentment and fulfillment
Simultaneously, task immersion dissipates:
Stress and pressure
Self-doubt and anxiety
Boredom and distraction
Singletasking is concomitant with immersion. A colleague of mine stays on track by imagining someone he admires is sitting right next to him, observing his level of achievement. The upcoming pages are filled with additional methods to increase your ability to singletask and to work in a heightened flow state.
Parking Lot
Singletasking does not require discarding thoughts that are not aligned with your current endeavor. Instead, adopt a practice that enables you to place unrelated insights aside until the time comes to redirect your mind.
Perhaps you are familiar with the concept of a “parking lot” in meetings. Too many of us have been foiled by sloppy meetings with topics that veer all over the place. Perhaps a meeting has been designated to discuss a new reporting structure, which leads someone to bring up the need for biannual performance reviews. Her point might be valid, yet it lacks direct relevance. A few more tenuously related subjects are mentioned and you become collectively gridlocked in a snarl of topics.
The clock ticks ominously overhead.
Enter the parking lot, a flip chart or whiteboard upon which the meeting facilitator makes a list of raised topics that are best set aside for a more appropriate time. A visible list makes capturing parking lot items clear and overt.
You can adapt this technique when working independently, to focus on your current task without allowing your own thoughts to become sidetracked. When embarking on a task, keep handy a designated place to notate items for your own parking lot. You can create a Notes page on your smartphone or use a notebook. I do not recommend Post-its®, the back of receipts, or envelopes from discarded junk mail. I learned this the hard way.
When an idea strikes that is unrelated to your current task, don’t let it distract you from what you’ve begun. Write it down and go back to what you are doing.
Why not just hope you’ll remember it later? Because:
If it’s on your mind, your mind isn’t clear.
Pausing to write down an ancillary thought does not lessen your commitment to singletasking. Let’s say you are working in a room with natural light, in the late afternoon, and the sun begins to set. The room darkens. Do you hunker down, thinking, “I won’t turn on the light, as I am intent on my work,” or do you briefly stand to flip the light switch and return to your task, better equipped to work without squinting? Just as it is nonsensical to sit in the dark, failing to modify your surroundings to enable smooth progress, taking an idea out of your head and onto a page is at times necessary to maintain full concentration.
If I have an unexpected revelation, I want to capture it immediately. I get it out of my head and onto paper—to work through, expand, or toss out later. If I don’t write down an insight for future reference, I either forget it or I try to keep it at the forefront of my mind—a distraction from my primary task.
Scribing a word or two clears the mind, reducing distraction. Many people tell me they have terrible memories, using that as an excuse for losing ideas, not following up on obligations, missing deadlines, and forgetting promised deliverables. Most of us have faulty memories to some degree. The quality of your memory is irrelevant! What matters is having a system in place to manage your thought processes.
Separation
We live in a world of devices that combine many functions. The smartphone, a modern-day Swiss Army knife, brandishes a plethora of features. Who would have imagined, twenty years ago, that a phone could include a camera, an alarm clock, a map, and a flashlight—for starters. Replacing several devices with just one is a widely regarded benefit of smartphones. Is there a downside?
Consider this. A challenging day draws to a close; you are ready for sleep. The last action you take before closing your eyes is setting your alarm clock for the next morning. Picking up your phone to use the alarm clock feature, you notice that three messages have unexpectedly accumulated—inducing sleeplessness. Every sleep expert in the known universe admonishes us to create a peaceful, quiet, calm atmosphere before bedtime to encourage a graceful slide into sleep. Remember when reading a nice book eased you peacefully into slumber? An unruly mobile device is the antisoother.
I used to turn off my alarm clock by, well, turning off my alarm clock. Then I switched over to using the alarm on my smart-phone. Less to pack on business trips! Yet my day starts with an onslaught of tweets, texts, and messages. And if I glance at the time in the middle of the night and accidentally spy a stressful post? Forget about returning to a blissful dream state.
I had started putting my grocery list in the Notes section of my phone. It’s easy to update and always with me. The drawback? When shopping I was also on the receiving end of client calls, emails, and Instagram. Plus, I was prone to walking the aisles with my head down, squinting at a small screen.
I am grateful to computers. Editing is infinitely easier than in pre–word processor days. On the flip side, now the Internet is a tantalizing keystroke away. I’m reminded of a New Yorker cartoon of a guy looking at a pop-up box on his computer screen that reads, “The Internet wants to destroy your productivity,” with a single option to click: “Always allow.”6
I enforce a policy of silenced mobile devices during my presentations. If a message must be returned, I ask people to take it outside so no calling or texting takes place in our shared space. In most cases, participants just put their phones away. It is really amazing to be in a program with sometimes hundreds of people who are all concentrating on the people and discussions taking place right in front of them.
Meanwhile, I always integrate participant-based activities into my presentations, and these are sometimes timed. It is simple to use the timer on my phone. Conflict of interest! Using the timer on my phone has the unintended side effect of reconnecting me with everything on my phone, most of it unrelated to the session.
Happily, this is all easily resolved. I sought out an old-school stopwatch that I wear around my neck on a cord. It’s pretty cool.
How about going back to using a real alarm clock? There are plenty of spiffy designs and svelte travel versions.
Write your shopping list on paper or print out the electronic version before hitting the store.
When doing detailed work on your computer, consider going off-line to really concentrate on a document.
Our minds are easily led off track. Unbundling functions helps.
If Your Phone’s So Smart, Can You Teach It to Heel?
A colleague heard about my work on singletasking and reflected on the struggle some people have keeping their electronic devices under control. He decided this is analogous to training a puppy. Puppies are appreciated for their appeal and frenetic energy. They are a bundle of potential. So, too, are smartphones!
Why do some [dogs or electronics; fill in the blank] grow into well-behaved, loveable members of the family and others become a hindrance to a sane existence, spreading chaos wherever they tread?
We both know the answers: Training. Tough love. Discipline.
It is high time to teach your smartphone how to heel, sit, and get off the nice new carpet. It’s not your dog’s fault. It’s not your phone’s fault. It’s your thumbs doing the tapping.
In fact, while we’re skirting around the matter, you may as well get accustomed to the idea that it is always your responsibility to take control of situations. Blaming the media (however pesky), your work (however daunting), or other people (however tedious) is the definition of futile. Look it up. Really. No, don’t.
Fences
Ignoring the onslaught of distractions in our lives seems to require superhuman strength. I don’t have it—do you? Place a steaming hot plate of cheese fries in front of me and I’ll eat every last one. Still, if I go through my day without any cheese fries mystically emerging, I’m just fine without them.
The further removed we are from temptation, the better positioned we are to stick with our best intentions. Technology isn’t the problem. The way you handle it in your life is the crux of the matter.
Let’s say you’re sitting at your desk, on a client call. You lean back in your chair, facing your desktop. An instant message darts across your screen. Some colleagues are picking up lunch down the street; do you want anything? Not wanting to miss the opportunity for a personal delivery from your favorite Thai dive, you quickly type back a lunch order. At that moment you hear the client ask, “Do you agree with that strategy?” Unfortunately, you have no recollection of the statement that preceded her question.
There are endless variations on the above situation. It is exceedingly difficult to not reply in the moment—a few seconds of your time and you are set with an unexpectedly delicious meal. Yet the price turns out to be quite a bit higher than the cost of lunch. I can nearly guarantee that your client noticed the slight pause between her question and your response. And your request that she repeat what she just said did not exactly enhance her opinion of your competence.
I am not suggesting that you stoically resist the urge to reply to incoming messages. It is really quite hard to ignore distractions. So let’s nip this in the bud. We can create “fences” to prevent potential distractions from reaching us when we’re occupied elsewhere.
When I need to concentrate on a meeting, phone call, project, or any critical task, I mitigate distractions before they happen. I prepare my work space. All ringers, chimes, and pings are muted. In fact, I keep these muted the majority of the time. I also turn off visual alerts and social media messaging. If you prefer to leave these alerts on, then turn away, cover up, or turn off your screens during meetings or scheduled calls. No peeking. On top of this, I tidy up my desk—a mess is also a distraction.
I am fortunate to have a windowed office with a decent view, so I sometimes turn myself away from my desk to face the window for the duration of a phone call. This technique tends to backfire during an in-person meeting, however.
Let’s say you want to singletask but don’t have much time to devote to a phone call. Easy. Simply let the caller know up front: “I’m glad we’ve touched base. I have fifteen minutes to discuss the plan for tomorrow’s meeting.” Give a gentle reminder when you have five. Then provide complete single-mindedness during this brief conversation. Some of us erroneously believe that because we aren’t visible to someone else we can get away with sneaking in little extras during a call. Release this misconception to achieve stronger outcomes and save time in the long run.
It is infinitely superior to be fully present on a brief call than partially present on a long one. In the process, you are demonstrating respect for the other person’s time.
Similar techniques can be employed when singletasking on your computer. Though covering your screen is not an option in this circumstance, you can still turn off auditory and visual alerts. Keep open window tabs to a minimum. Notify colleagues that you are temporarily unreachable. Resist the urge to make or receive phone calls during the time designated for this project.
Finally, get to know your devices. Learn what internal functions or apps exist to assist you in your dedication to a single-tasked lifestyle. Do you have a Favorites or Groups feature? This allows you to screen for only family messages, for instance. The Do Not Disturb option is also standard on most devices and is quite useful. Also consider options to disallow pop-up messages on your home screen, if they prove a greater hindrance than help.
This is just to get you jump-started.