Mono-task to accomplish more energy

Forget multitasking. It’s so yesterday. And it’s also a secret robber of energy.

Unfortunately, we’re in the age of maniacal multitasking. Fugger about it. Multitasking is the enemy of mindfulness, and mindfulness is your greatest ally in reclaiming your energy and focus.

It’s time to mono-task.

Mindfulness is one of my favorite subjects (and one of my biggest challenges, as it is for most people I know who practice it). Yet the rewards are immense, not only in terms of your energy but also in terms of your relationships and you health. Mindful eating is both the enemy of mindless snacking and a powerful tool in weight loss. Mindful conversation keeps you engaged with the person you’re talking to, instead of scanning the room to see whether someone more interesting is about to walk through the door.

When you’re mindful, you’re present in the moment. You can bring all your energy to bear on the task at hand, whether it’s eating, watching television, having a conversation, or even meditating.

Mindfulness equals energy. It’s that simple.

And that difficult. In an era when you don’t feel productive if you’re not doing three things at once, eliminating extraneous distractions and concentrating all your energy on one thing at a time can be difficult. But man, I sit worth it. You’ll actually get in touch with your own power and energy in a way you may not have done in a long time.

So how to practice? Simple. When you’re on the phone, don’t read your emails, don’t rifle through files, don’t instant-message your spouse, don’t surf the ‘net and…. Please don’t drive. Instead, talk, listen, and participate in conversation. Become engaged in whatever it is you are doing, something that’s nearly impossible when you’re dealing in multiples.

DO LESS TO DO BETTER
Mono-tasking saves energy (not to mention your sanity). In fact, studies show that multitasking is less productive and more stressful than concentration on the task at hand. A 2005 study funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London found that checking your email while performing another creative task decreases you IQ in the moment by ten points. That’s more than twice the amount when smoking marijuana, and the equivalent of not sleeping for 36 hours.

In a terrific essay aptly titled The Myth of Multitasking, New Atlantis magazine senior editor Christine Rosen argued that when you’re doing a bunch of things at once, there’s a good chance you’re doing all of them poorly. She was hardly the first to notice this essential truth.

Back in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield wrote these prescient words: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time”.

Former eight-time National Chess Champion Josh Waitzkin, author of The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance, calls multitasking “a virus”. One of the most inspiringly energetic people I’ve ever interviewed is best-selling author Timothy Ferriss, who wrote The 4-Hour Workweek, a book in which he extols the virtues of “single-tasking”. Coincidence?

“Multitasking forces the brain to share processing resources”, says Mark Bauerlein, Ph.D., author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. He explains that even if the tasks you’re doing don’t use the same brain regions, there is still some “shared infrastructure” that gets overloaded.

Edward Hallowell, M.D., author of the self-explanatory title CrazyBusy, calls multitasking “a mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously”.

Bottom line: By doing less, or at least by doing fewer things at any one given time, you can actually increase your energy for the task at hand and, in the end, get more done.