Sunday Morning Wake-Up Call

~ Live & Learn

A few months ago, I was teetering on the brink of feeling overwhelmed by life’s responsibilities, afflicted by the ambient anxiety that seems to be an intrinsic part of life in the 2020s. In an effort to maintain — or maybe restore — my sanity, I embarked on a personal endurance challenge.

Other people, at similar moments, begin competing in grueling triathlons, or head off on intensive meditation retreats. Me? I decided to give up listening to podcasts or music while running, or driving, or loading the dishwasher, or doing almost anything else. To just focus, in other words, on what it was I was actually doing, one activity at a time.

It was surprisingly hard. Once you’ve finished mocking me for treating such a trifling alteration to my habits like a grand existential struggle, I have one request: Try it. Identify the small tricks you use to avoid being fully present with whatever you’re doing, and put them aside for a week or two.

You may discover, as I did, that you were unwittingly addicted to not doing one thing at a time. You might even come to agree with me that restoring our capacity to live sequentially — that is, focusing on one thing after another, in turn, and enduring the confrontation with our human limitations that this inherently entails — may be among the most crucial skills for thriving in the uncertain, crisis-prone future we all face. […]

At work, the way to get more tasks done is to learn to let most of them wait while you focus on one. “This is the ‘secret’ of those people who ‘do so many things’ and apparently so many difficult things,” wrote the management guru Peter Drucker in his book “The Effective Executive.” “They do only one at a time.” Making a difference in one domain requires giving yourself permission not to care equally about all the others. […]

Instead, you can pour your finite time, energy and attention into a handful of things that truly count. You’ll enjoy things more, into the bargain. My gratifying new ability to “be here now” while running or driving or cooking dinner isn’t the result of having developed any great spiritual prowess. Rather, it’s a matter of realizing I could only ever be here now anyway — so I might as well give up the stressful struggle to pretend otherwise.

— Oliver Burkeman, from “Today’s Superpower Is Doing One Thing at a Time” (The New York Times · July 29, 2023). Burkeman is the author of “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.”

82 thoughts on “Sunday Morning Wake-Up Call”

    1. And that’s exactly his point Ray. Good article, as are his reasons for why we multitask. And this is not a new phenomenon…

      “It’s not that the urge to multitask is anything new. “One thinks with a watch in one’s hand,” Nietzsche complained as early as 1887, “even as one eats one’s midday meal while reading the latest news of the stock market.”

      And this hit home:

      ” and against the shortness of our time on earth, which averages little more than four thousand weeks. All this finitude feels unpleasantly constraining, because it means there will always be many more things we could do than we ever will do — and that the choice to spend a portion of our time on any one thing automatically entails the sacrifice of countless other things we might have done with it.

      This explains the attraction of multitasking: It offers the false promise that we might somehow slip the bonds of our finitude. We tell ourselves that with sufficient self-discipline, plus the right time-management tricks, we might finally “get on top of everything” and feel good about ourselves at last. This utopia never arrives, of course, though it often feels as if it might be just around the corner.”

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  3. I think I’m the happiest when I give myself over to a single activity – admittedly it’s difficult, given that so much of my life I’ve spent congratulating myself for keeping all the balls in the air. If there is something to be said for retirement, it is felt in those moments when you realize that this ‘thing, task, person’ is deserving of one’s time and attention – full stop.

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    1. He had not been, he did not wish to go, he was quite content just to gaze out. Just to do that. To him this was the whole point of retirement, of existence – to be stationary, happy and useless…Yes, he had grown to love this interesting inactivity and privacy – perhaps too much, he thought.

      — Sebastian Barry, Old God’s Time (Viking, March 21, 2023)

      The world was asking him to step back into life. Oh, again, again.

      — Sebastian Barry, Old God’s Time (Viking, March 21, 2023)

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      1. I didn’t mean to figuratively kick you in the solar plexus…Professional services with well over 3,000 people worldwide, relished the person who would ‘play hurt’. And those with global responsibility were championed as ‘road warriors’. No vacations without conference calls, boundaries blurring all over the place.

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  4. This is an interesting concept to consider. Personally, I cannot multitask if I’m working on something that requires serious concentration (for example, preparing my income taxes). I need (almost) complete silence to get that job done. On the other hand, when I’m driving long distances on the interstate and there is little traffic, I might go slightly insane if I couldn’t listen to music/news/podcasts. But would I be a safer driver if I turned off the electronics and attempted to stay in the present moment by paying close attention to what’s going on around me (both the traffic and the scenery)? I don’t know. I say that because I know that I would fail at staying in the present moment and would end up daydreaming about something else.

    Constantly being “in the present moment” is certainly difficult for most people and requires practice. In fact, it’s nearly impossible for me based on my moderate experience with meditation. Having said that, I do feel more calm and refreshed after I practice meditation.

    Regarding quality of life: is the quality of my life better when I concentrate on “the feeling of the water splashing on my hands” when I am hand washing dishes? Or am I happier listening to music when I am doing this type of simple task? (I vote for music!)

    Perhaps “knowing when to multitask, and knowing, when not to“ is the answer (if you can be mindful enough to remember to “flip that switch“!) Just remembering when to “flip the switch“ would be a challenge requiring mindfulness.

    Complicated stuff! (At least for me.)

    Have a great Sunday everyone!

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    1. Paul, thanks for sharing. Re: “Personally, I cannot multitask if I’m working on something that requires serious concentration” – I reserve time in early mornings to do just this. And when incoming calls or other interruptions intrude, I just ignore them to finish the deep thinking. It’s not easy. It doesn’t happen enough. But when I’m completed, I know, that it was the focus that enabled completion, and completion at a high quality level.

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      1. We need to make sure we can multi-task, because it’s more efficient sometimes, and at times we done have a choice.
        And we need to know we’re able to give one thing our full attention, because somethings do, deservedly so.
        Other than this, it’s an ongoing fine-tuning and balancing act.
        At this age, I’ve come to switch back and forth smoothly.
        We go about life like a dance. And we need the soundtrack.

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    2. LOL Hi Sawsan!
      I wrote that from the viewpoint of meditating and mindfulness. Not from the view of “everyday life”. If I were a monk in a monastery, then listening to music would indeed qualify as “not being in the present moment“.

      My mistake. This post is “multitasking focused“ more than “mindfulness focused“. I went off on a tangent. Apologies for that.

      Now if we’re going to start picking things apart…
      I will not comment on your implication that “all men are stupid“… 🙂

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      1. I don’t think the point is that we *shouldn’t* listen to a podcast or music while unloading the dishwasher, for example, but rather that it’s a problem that we feel we *can’t* just unload the dishwasher *without* the podcast/music playing. Our minds are constantly distracted. There are times when multitasking is warranted, and while I agree with Sawsan that listening to something isn’t exactly a task, it is an additional activity demanding a portion of our attention. It’s a skill, in this world, to be able to focus on one thing, and to be present with ourselves.

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        2. I am disinterested in any call to spirituality that divorces my mind from my body, voice, or people. To suggest a form of faith that tells me to sit down alone and be quiet? It does not rest easy on the bones.

          — Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us (Convergent Books, February 22, 2022)

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      2. Actually, was I off on a tangent?

        Here’s a quote from Oliver Burkeman, taken directly from today’s post:

        “Me? I decided to give up listening to podcasts or music while running, or driving, or loading the dishwasher, or doing almost anything else. To just focus, in other words, on what it was I was actually doing, one activity at a time.”

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      4. Hi Paul!
        I had not yet read your comment when I replied here.
        I was referring to the author from Dave’s post. I don’t think loading the dishwasher and listening to music at the same time counts as multitasking.
        I think what this young man needs is more tranquility, more silence.

        Men are not stupid!
        But the greatest majority of them cannot multi-task if their life depended on it.

        As a woman, I know one of my strength is multitasking.
        That being said, I look forward to the few days here an there where I don’t need it, just for a dose of tranquility.

        All the love and respect to the Great Men in our lives.

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          1. No disrespect intended.
            I apologize for it sounding like that.
            But, these are facts.

            Did you ever walk around the house while breastfeeding a baby and getting another kid’s lunch ready, at the same time?

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          4. This is the reason that I believe that women are indeed better at multitasking than men. I have no science to back that up, it is simply what I have observed. My guess is that women are “wired“ (genetically) to be good multitaskers. They have to be in order to play the role of a mother.

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          5. As simple as that, wired differently, genetically speaking.
            The way in your line of work, ones and zeros, except it’s C,G, A, and T.
            The genetic code is written with 4 letters. The same 4 for every living creature in this universe. Makes for very sophisticated final products.
            I still think God spent a little more time coding for The Woman.

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        2. No worries Sawsan! I’m sorry I misunderstood who you were referring to!

          This brings up another topic: trying to communicate using email/text/blog comments often does not work well. In this case the conversation went off the rails because of some sort of timing problem related to when WordPress actually displays a post! There are other problems with writing in general (even hand written letters). We have no body language or “tone of voice“ to work with as we read. I have had people COMPLETELY misinterpret something I have written because of the “lack of body language/tone of voice issue.” Here’s the most basic example I can think of: I type the word “blue”, and two people read that… One person thinks I mean “sky blue“, and the other thinks that I mean “midnight blue“. Writing something can really come back and bite you lol !!

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          1. Finally (there will be a little bit of repetition here on my part regarding multitasking)…

            I believe both men and women can be equally brilliant/smart, or not brilliant/smart!

            But as I stated elsewhere, I do believe women are better multitaskers than men. My best guess is that women have been genetically wired that way so they can be good mothers.

            Personally… I cannot multitask to save my life! 🙃🙃

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          2. I understand Paul.
            Trust me, I do!
            I work in language access, as in translator, verbal and written. With the absence of body language and tone of voice, a lot goes missing.

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  7. Also (because my previous comment wasn’t long enough, apparently), can we talk about the idea that just listening to a podcast or reading a book is somehow a waste of time? Like how could someone *just* listen to something when they could be listening and getting 6 other things done? All hail productivity! It’s such a toxic mindset, and something I admittedly struggle with a lot.

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  8. Oliver Burkeman’s description of his challenges is probably relatable to many–thanks for inviting us to meet this. The “human being in a body” challenge! Somehow when life became very full of those who gave my life its shape, I automatically stopped playing music or books on tape or NPR in the car. I’ll bet that giving ourselves time to be with ourselves and whatever we’re doing can lead to self-esteem…like how meditating feels like intimacy with a larger self.

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  9. I refuse to listen to music or podcasts when I run. It would just bug me. I will listen to books when walking – just to walk for exercise – never when I have camera in hand. I am one with nature in those moments.
    As for music in the car. I went for months with no radio in my car. It was hell! Gimme tunes to make the drive enjoyable!

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  10. From now on, before I comment on anything, I’m going to have to go back and skim through the entire thread from beginning to end in order to do my best to understand the context! Even then, I might miss something important (because it posted right after I “skimmed by”)!!

    Bloody computers!! They have been abusing me recently! You know… I really like throwing frisbees (seriously… I do). Right now, smart, phones, tablets, and thin computer monitors are starting to look like really good frisbees! Especially if I throw them as far as possible into a lake!

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  13. Pingback: Multitasking – The Final Word – Live & Learn

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