Are We Really Able to Multitask?

Nature has given us amaz­ing brains, but we were only alloted one per per­son. This means we can’t really mul­ti­task. Instead, we have to time-share if we’re try­ing to do more than one thing concurrently. 

Texting and dri­ving doesn’t work out well, but what about other things? I started notic­ing how much “mul­ti­task­ing” I was attempt­ing in my life: read­ing e-mails while talk­ing on the phone, eat­ing din­ner while watch­ing tele­vi­sion, think­ing about things while doing some­thing else; and embar­rass­ingly, the list goes on.

When you get down to it, atten­tion has its lim­its. If you were to give 100 per­cent of your atten­tion to what you’re doing—your work, cook­ing a meal, gar­den­ing or hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with a friend, for example—it stands to rea­son that you should do a bet­ter job or have a more ful­fill­ing experience.

It really hit me when I started to try and give my full atten­tion to what­ever I was doing. That means if you’re think­ing, think. But if you’re lis­ten­ing, don’t think, lis­ten. If you’re doing some­thing, don’t lis­ten or think, do. It wasn’t easy, but I was amazed at the depth and sub­tlety of expe­ri­ence when I became a uni­tasker. I real­ized that I have been divid­ing my own atten­tion in the belief that I could get more done. But what I gained in quan­tity, I actu­ally lost in qual­ity. And isn’t qual­ity of life what we want?

You might try exper­i­ment­ing with this your­self. I’m try­ing to inte­grate more of one-thing-at-a-time into my life, and I’m find­ing it both less stress­ful and more fulfilling.

If you try it, I’d be inter­ested to know what you think. Email me at ken@organicconnectmag.com.

Publisher

Ken Whitman

Ken Whitman is pres­i­dent of Natural Vitality, a purpose-driven nutri­tional prod­ucts com­pany. Natural Vitality pub­lishes Organic Connections as a pub­lic ser­vice as part of its Natural Revitilization efforts.