*Get More Done – One Thing at a Time*
I would like to say this book changed my life. But I can’t. Old attitudes and behaviors are hard to shift even in the face of new evidence. I don’t know about you, but I often assumed the persona of being able to multitask at a high level.
A bit of pride is usually attached to that stance. I think I had some pretty good arguments to support my perception that I really was doing multiple things at the same time. Then along came Devora Zack.
In some ways it was a bit like the nursery song. I was Little Miss Muffet, sitting on my tuffet (computer chair), eating my curds and whey (basking in simultaneous use of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Safari, iPad email, and cell phone social media). Then “along came a spider (Ms. Zack) and sat down beside her (me) and scared Miss Muffet away.” The breakdown occurred at ‘scaring me away’ from my tuffet and multiple devices. It wasn’t that simple. But that is jumping to the end of the story. I’ll go back and fill in some of the gaps. And you can decide what to do when ‘along comes a spider’ to your tuffet and starts messing with your curds and whey.
So, what is this ‘singletasking’ (getting more done – one thing at a time) all about? Zack’s fundamental premise is that multitasking is a myth. Okay – that kind of hits where it hurts. To Zack, what I (and perhaps you) call multitasking, she calls task-switching, even if it is done at what appears to be the speed of light. She quotes a neuroscientist, “You cannot focus on one task while doing another. . . there will always be interference between the two tasks.” To say we can multitask is “deluding yourself.” But how can that be true? Many of us study and play music at the same time. Drive and talk to a passenger in the car. Watch tv and knit. Mop the floor and sing.
Zack’s response is that “activities that require virtually no conscious effort can be performed in conjunction with simple tasks and do not fall in the bandwidth of multitasking.” Such ‘simple’ tasks are “automated, low-level functions, including rote activities that do not require concentration.” There is no competition for the same mental resources. I’m not really listening to the music until something catchy comes on and I shift my focus from studying to what I am hearing. I am an experienced driver in a familiar car who knows this road well. I have done so many knit-one pearl-two’s that I can knit while doing jumping jacks. And, while singing like Zorba the Greek, I am hardly even aware of the floor. In fact, I am likely not aware that I am in fact dancing with the mop.
Are we getting the point? We think we are doing multiple things at one time. And perhaps we are. But only one of those things is really getting the primary focus of our attention and energy. And usually it will be the new or newer thing that hasn’t been rehearsed into being automatic yet.
A major concern for Zack in offering her thesis is that, in our overly distracted states of trying to do too many things at the same time, we lose out on the very essence of quality and value of each experience. We ‘blow’ through life like a hurricane then wonder why we are stressed out and not really enjoying enough of it. Zack calls us to immerse ourselves in the present experience, BE here right now, and do one thing at a time.
Her subtitle is “Get more done – one thing at a time.” Yet perhaps the best value of what Zack shares is that we might eventually find ourselves gradually shifting from the mania of DOING to the serenity of BEING.