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Home Sweet Home

MYTH

Singletasking is for the workplace.

REALITY

Singletasking is for all aspects of life.

Always do one thing less than you think you can do.

BERNARD MANNES BARUCH

I want you to have an inherently fulfilling, positive, rewarding, meaningful career. I just want you to be home when you’re at home. Singletask it, baby.

The high-tech TiVo Roamio device can record several television shows simultaneously, enabling users to watch live or recorded shows anywhere. Isn’t that wonderful?

Rather than highlighting the life-enhancing aspects of enabling consumers to never miss a show, however, a tongue-in-cheek campaign from 2014 featured users:

Crashing into a tree from distracted downhill skiing

Watching TiVo during a family therapy session

Being imprisoned for watching television in the Vatican

Even the promoters of this high-tech device see the downside of splitting attention.

Home Life Quiz

Many of us aren’t fully aware of the extent to which task-switching affects our personal lives. Perhaps you think you’ve got a handle on distractions, although others have suggested that you might reconsider your habits. Or perhaps you wonder whether you’d benefit from a change or two. If so, the Home Life Quiz (table 4) is for you. Find a cozy spot and enjoy.

Reflect on your home life. Using the following questionnaire, circle the degree to which you engage in each of the following activities, using this scale:

3 = Frequently (at least once a week)

2 = At times (at least once a month)

1 = An anomaly (rarely)

0 = Not applicable (never)

Table 4: Home Life Quiz How often do you …

1. Annoy others by not fully listening when they speak to you?

2. Take your work home with you?

3. Have two or more media devices on simultaneously?

4. Go out with family or friends and spend much of the time on a personal device?

5. Replace face-to-face conversations with communication via social media?

6. Have hurried or distracted family dinners without meaningful conversation?

7. Forget about food you’re preparing because you were thinking about something else?

8. Enter a room and forget why you came in?

9. Talk on the phone while on your computer?

10. Eat while walking, driving, or otherwise paying no attention to your food?

Calculate Your Score

Now, calculate your score by adding up your total points. This score reveals your current propensity to singletask in your personal life.

YOUR SCORE: __________

RESULTS

0 to 10 Points

Level 1: Très Impressive

Give yourself a pat on the back!

11 to 16 Points

Level 2: Not Bad, Not Bad

You’re definitely on the right track.

17 to 23 Points

Level 3: Keep the Dream Alive

You’re positioned to become more present. Stay with it.

24 to 30 Points

Level 4: Distraction Faction

Take a leap of faith and try out a few of the methods in this book.
See what happens!

The extent to which you immerse yourself in one experience at a time impacts everything from your health to your relationships to your personal fulfillment. Consider the way we chew food. Multitasking during meals appears to be linked to overeating and poor digestion. Many dietary and health experts state that directing our attention to eating during meals increases satisfaction. Chewing carefully and pausing between bites reduces caloric input. Singletask eating is a weight-loss aid!

Being on social media while interacting with others gives them the not-so-subtle message that they don’t matter. Also, devoting much of your personal time to idle activities reduces your sense of meaning and fulfillment. Psychologist Abraham Maslow would say it lowers your probability of becoming self-actualized (achieving your full potential).

The questions on the Home Life Quiz fall into two major categories of what prevents you from being fully present: relational and personal. Five of the questions in the survey looked at individual goal orientation and five were relational. To see what affects you most, check out table 5.

TABLE 5: Comparing Relational and Person Effects

SURVEY QUESTION	PRIMARILY RELATIONAL OR PRIMARILY PERSONAL?
1	Relational
2	Personal
3	Personal
4	Relational
5	Relational
6	Relational
7	Personal
8	Personal
9	Relational
10	Personal

Based on your results, is task-switching more likely to harm your interpersonal relationships or pursuit of your goals?

Carving Out Time

If you are dissatisfied with your score on the Home Life Quiz, how might you rectify the situation? Where are opportunities for positive change?

Find pockets of time to connect with people who matter most to you—including yourself. Perhaps you can practice leaving your phone at the door for the first hour you are home, or designate a brief segment of each week to pursue an interest.

What about family singletasking? On car trips, are you typically plugged in separately? How can you use travel time to enrich your relationships? Family psychologists say the car is an ideal place to have meaningful conversations because eye contact is not required, making teens in particular more comfortable opening up.

There are other approaches, too. For instance, a colleague relays the following story:

I know a family with kids who are now young adults. They are still so close. We asked them what their secret was. Their answer? A hot tub. They would take a hot tub together—or a subset of them would—every night. They would get in, relax in the warm water, not want to get out, and have no distractions. They actually talked about deep things. Better than family dinners, they decided, where people are eating, asking for the salt, and at least one person is dealing with serving or cleaning.

Although not everyone has a hot tub, the concept can be applied to numerous accessible options. Take evening or morning walks. Go on picnics. Have weekly family meetings to reconnect. Sit outside together. Roast marshmallows around a fireplace or even a candle. And if you are simply enjoying a meal together, put down your devices! I can’t tell you how often I’ve observed families dining with each person staring at a screen rather than interacting with one another.

It is a matter of making conscious choices.

Choosing Well

There are a plethora of books with charming titles emphasizing the importance of being a perfect parent raising the perfect child. The Good Enough Child sets itself apart from the get-go.¹ One chapter, “The Good Enough Parent,” provides a reminder about the value of making choices with a high likelihood for positive outcomes. This parenting scenario is easily transferable to virtually any context, including the workplace.

A full-time working mom has an evening ritual of reading aloud a chapter of a book to her kids before bed. One evening she is particularly exhausted and just doesn’t have the energy. Still, she doesn’t want to let her kids down, so she settles in to read.

She immediately becomes resentful and grumpy, snapping at her kids. She feels like a failure; her intention to be “good” results in being “bad.” The author explains a fundamental, profound lesson, which basically boils down to: If you want to read, read. If you aren’t up to reading, don’t. Either choice is acceptable. The sole unacceptable route? Setting yourself up for failure by reading begrudgingly, despite having no energy reserves, and then short-circuiting.

There are only two decision points:

Make a choice, and then stick with it.

You can make a different choice next time. No need to be stubborn! Simply stick with what you set out to do for the time being, rather than dissipating your energy second-guessing your decision throughout the current experience. Decide what matters most to you in a particular instance, and commit.

I made a similar proclamation earlier because I want you to get this into your head. Consider it a mantra.

Make your choice by assessing what really matters to you most. Perhaps you are feeling a bit lazy and want very much to remain supine on the sofa, catching the tail end of a Simpsons marathon. Still, it is your pal’s birthday and you intended to stop by with her favorite treat. Replace the path of least resistance with what is more important. You will begin to notice a correlation between what matters more and what ultimately makes you feel better in the long run.

I am not implying, however, that self-sacrifice is always the way to go. Ask yourself which choice rings true for you in the moment, given the surrounding context. Your preference can change later without indicating you are the slightest bit wishy-washy or inept.

At this moment, you may want to go to sleep more than anything in the world. Unless this is a 24/7 craving, it’s possibly a sound option. Momentarily choosing sleep over your job or your home life for an evening does not mean you don’t value or care about your career or family. Quite the opposite. Taking care of yourself makes you a better contributor to everything and everyone else in your world.

Once you make a decision about what you are doing at the moment—or for the evening—don’t second-guess or stray from your plan by sneaking in the other choice simultaneously.

Whatever you choose, do it fully. Otherwise you miss out on truly living. As Georgia O’Keeffe observed, “Nobody sees a flower, really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time—like to have a friend takes time.”

This quote reminds me to be truly present where I am.

I am also inspired to make better decisions. Still, I mess up plenty, too.

A Humiliating Example of Flawed Logic

As Ms. Singletasker herself, I still catch myself foolishly attempting to task-switch from time to time. I tell my family and friends to call me out if they catch me “cheating.” Even with steadfast conviction, changing behaviors requires vigilance.

There are myriad excuses for “one little exception”—I’m lost; traffic made me late for an appointment; it’s to do a good deed; I really can handle it; etc.

It doesn’t get any better (or, rather, worse) than this: While working on Singletasking, I convinced myself that it was perfectly reasonable to attend yoga class while concurrently editing my book. I would sneak in a few pages of my manuscript, folded to the relevant section, and cached close to my mat. This haphazard arrangement lasted a few days, until I took a particularly demanding class. It was impossible to turn the pages while managing a solid downward dog. Forced to focus solely on my practice, I reaped the benefits of a better workout, returning to my work revitalized and more productive.

As any two-bit practitioner knows, a real yogi devotes her body and mind to an hour-long class. Not to mention that the manuscript in question, as you are well aware, touts the virtues of singletasking. Combining tasks really does add up to less than the sum of the parts. I never brought my manuscript to yoga again.

What is often called living in the moment can also be described as singletasking your way through life.

A Happy Perk

Singletasking is the gift that never stops giving. In fact, according to Dr. David Goldman, a key to happiness is being immersed in the moment.²

Pay attention, ladies and gents, to that idea. Singletasking is correlated to happiness. This is big. Why do you think it’s the case?

Scientists explain that people are more fulfilled when fully engaged. Beyond the golden elixir of effectiveness, we are happier when singletasking.

In 2010, Harvard University engaged 2,250 adults to assess mood and involvement levels at random intervals. Happiness turned out to be directly correlated with high task engagement. As a corollary, the study also found that easily distracted people were less likely to be happy.³

Psychologist Viktor Frankl would have had something to add to this conversation. Much of his life’s work was devoted to discerning what makes some people fulfilled, regardless of circumstances. He identified a strong correlation between happiness and two mental processes: the ability to detect meaning in all of life’s moments, and the ability to let go of the self-defeating obsession with outcome.

Today, many people with comfortable lives are so preoccupied with recording joyful events that they are at risk of missing them altogether. What is more important: cherishing every moment of a holiday, major life event, or sensory experience—or snapping a photo for subpar viewing at an indeterminate moment in the future? What is your off-the-cuff response, and do your actions support your convictions?

Let’s just combine all these questions into one humdinger from an iconic 1990s rock song, “Graduate” by Third Eye Blind: “Do you live the days you go through?”

Respond to that in the affirmative, and you’re stellar.

Ring My Bell

In 2007, violinist Joshua Bell, widely regarded as one of the world’s finest musicians, agreed to participate in an experiment. He rode the Washington, DC, Metro to the L’Enfant Plaza station, opened his violin case on the floor for tips, and played his multimillion-dollar violin for forty-five minutes.

Few people stopped to listen. Bell earned $32 in tips. Only one demographic consistently paused to hear him play: young children. Adults were too busy to be open to this stunning, free concert by a man who can command up to $1,000 per minute to play.⁴

We lose our capacity for joy and wonder when we are constantly rushing. Embracing singletasking includes being open to the possibility of unexpected moments that merit full engagement. Observing the world with partial attention as we breeze past could mean missing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Gregory Burns discusses author Peter Kaminsky’s description of hyperreality. “When I am really enjoying myself,” says Kaminsky, “I call it ‘special time’ … a different reality, one in which I am fully alive, fully focused, where each second is a ripe fruit bursting with juice.”

According to Burns, “Under the right circumstances … hyperreality [creates] transcendent moments that burn in your memory.”⁵

The more practiced we become at being “fully alive,” the greater our capacity to achieve a hyperreality where we are both happier and more capable.

Olympian Opportunities

The opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, provided a prime example of how to be absent during a peak experience.

Imagine that a lifetime of dedication and commitment has paid off—you’ve earned a place on an Olympic team. The moment has arrived; the world prepares to watch you shine in the opening ceremonies. However, the majority of athletes from some nations were neither soaking in the glorious moment nor waving back to the crowds. Instead, they were gazing into handheld devices, taking videos and selfies with which to “remember” the event later. The desire to capture the moment is understandable, yet certainly there would be plenty of high-quality, professional video to choose from later!

This aspect of the Sochi opening ceremonies displayed an utter lack of singlemindedness. Hundreds of athletes demonstrated how to be plugged in and disengaged. Over half of the athletes seemed to miss a peak experience.

Zen masters implore us to be here, now, even in mundane tasks such as dishwashing (a particularly tough sell for me). It is difficult to understand why so many athletes gave filming the event precedence over savoring a few miraculous moments of being the pride of their country, among the elite in the world. They missed out on the high that comes from total immersion—the singletask high.

One athlete, however, demonstrated the impact of single-tasking in the face of adversity. U.S. champion figure skater Jeremy Abbott crashed hard on his first jump during an intended quadruple toe loop in the men’s short program at the Olympics.

Despite being physically injured and mentally shaken, Abbott struggled back up and finished with gusto.⁶ Abbott concluded his stunning routine to a huge ovation and later commented, “I’m not the least bit ashamed. I stood up and I finished that program. I’m proud of my effort and what I did under the circumstances.”

Jeremy Abbott demonstrated strength of will and character. How did he manage to complete his routine with such spirit and presence of mind? He singletasked his mind and body one hundred percent. If he had diffused his mental or physical energy by lamenting his crash into the barrier in those first seconds, he could never have pulled off the brilliant performance that followed.

The same is true for honing the skill of being here, now. The way of singletasking just takes a couple of techniques, a little practice, and the perseverance to jump back up if you occasionally skate directly into the wall.

Back to Basics

Wrapped up in the frenzy of our lives, we are prone to losing track of the basics. In this book I’ve made a case for single-tasking. I’ve cited neuroscience, psychology, history, and cultural anecdotes. The most compelling evidence, though, is really from your own life.

When you short-circuit, is it from doing too much at once or one thing at a time? Think about when you feel the most creative, productive, and proud. I bet this happens when you are completely immersed in what you’re doing.

Allow me to remind you of the Singletasking Principle:

Get more done, one thing at a time.

Turns out, you have enough time after all. It’s just a matter of how you choose to spend it.

Now go out there and enjoy this beautiful day … one sunbeam at a time.