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Multi-Tasking
tmottes
Veteran
Can't Multitask, So Stop Trying
Can't Multitask (provides a few practical activities to prove the point)
I have been thinking about how the skills that one tries to develop through a buddhist practice are actually very different than the direction our modern world/society is taking. In today's world, depending on your culture and job, we are almost expected to multi-task. Yet the more we understand ourselves, multi-tasking seems to be a myth: a myth that costs more than we realize.
So I sit in meditation and I attempt to maintain my focus on my breath, but my focus is constantly shifted to other objects. I must then take the time and energy to move the focus back to my breath. This shifting of focus is the very process I am being "asked" to perform living in society. I like what the person in the second link says about automatic actions. If we can make concentration (how long we can maintain focus) an automatic task, then this frees up focus to be used in a more efficient manner (no longer having to switch back and forth).
Oh the potential
Can't Multitask (provides a few practical activities to prove the point)
I have been thinking about how the skills that one tries to develop through a buddhist practice are actually very different than the direction our modern world/society is taking. In today's world, depending on your culture and job, we are almost expected to multi-task. Yet the more we understand ourselves, multi-tasking seems to be a myth: a myth that costs more than we realize.
So I sit in meditation and I attempt to maintain my focus on my breath, but my focus is constantly shifted to other objects. I must then take the time and energy to move the focus back to my breath. This shifting of focus is the very process I am being "asked" to perform living in society. I like what the person in the second link says about automatic actions. If we can make concentration (how long we can maintain focus) an automatic task, then this frees up focus to be used in a more efficient manner (no longer having to switch back and forth).
Oh the potential
0
Comments
There was a moment of reverence before the second biscuit came.
But as for real multitasking--I agree with you that it's sort of a myth. I've thought, for example, that it would be good to engage in concerted "de-multitasking," for example start a habit of having only one browser tab open at a time, etc. I'm absolutely terrible with the topic-surfing thing.
I blame the invention of remote-controls.
Maybe I should try that.
Last weekend I mostly turned off the electronics and read a book - it was amazingly peaceful. Good to have a break, for sure, and monotask a bit.
I always have like 30 open! All the computers I run really slowly because I never close stuff.
He showed me how much memory I was using just with all the tabs once. I still didn't close them, but it was interesting.
I agree with the idea of multitasking, and it's such a sense of relief when you stop trying to do it and just keep at the task at hand regardless of what it might be. Our brains are so trained by school and work that we have to be thinking about the next task before we complete the current one, and I don't think it's healthy at all. We praise "good" multitaskers, but they are also the most stressed out and unhappy people I know. And multitasking while driving, that is THE worst. Driving itself is the king of multitasking, for everything you have to do and watch for and pay attention to, why on earth would you add other things to it? My almost 16 year old has his learners permit, and any time we go driving he fails to understand how anyone can attempt to even change a radio station while driving, lol. It's amazing how much our brains go on autopilot for some things, and it's a bit creepy in a way. There have been times in the past I've been driving and lost in thought, and when I finally "come to" I've driven like 8 miles past the turn I wanted to take. Doh. It makes me wonder what else I might have missed that could have been important (cars pulling out, deer in the road) so I can say that driving is one activity I am pretty much 100% aware and mindful of what I am doing. I don't talk on the phone, mess with the GPS, the radio, the ipod, I don't mess with any of that.