Multi-Tasking and Mindfulness

I am told that women are very good at multi-tasking, and men are not.  I'm sure women are good at it, but I think many men are too. It seems like it's an important thing to be able to do in this rushing world of ours, and we admire those who can multi-task.  The more the better!  All of us seem to have so much to do and so little time in which to do it, we feel we must always be doing two, three, or four things at once.

For instance, I'll bet most of us watch the evening news while we're eating supper -- and perhaps carrying on a conversation with whomever is at the table with us, even if it's only with a golden retriever taking great interest in what might not make it to your mouth.

Or how about this...chatting on the computer, on Facebook perhaps?  How many other things are you doing while chatting?  Talking on the phone to someone else? (I've done that.) Reading email? Checking out the latest on-line sales? Even sending emails while chatting.  I have a friend who send me emails while we're chatting!  (Not only is it very confusing to me, I feel like I don't have her full attention, even though it's me she's writing emails to at the same time!  And certainly I'm not giving her my full attention in the chat while I'm reading her email!  It's nuts.)

Or talking on the phone while folding laundry? Are we fully present to the person we're talking to, picking up the nuances in their voices, reading between the lines? And are we noticing how wonderful clean clothes smell, fresh off the line or out of the dryer?  I posit neither.

Or just now...my email program just dinged me, alerting me to the arrival of 3 new emails.  Shall I go see what they are...or finish this post?  The email can wait for now. I need to focus on what I'm doing.

And that's my point.  How on earth can we accomplish anything well if we're doing two or three other things at the same time?  Obviously, we can't. And what are we missing while we're multi-tasking?

All this came up this morning while I was re-reading Thich Nhat Hanh's wonderful manual on meditation, The Miracle of Mindfulness. The first chapter's title is "The Essential Discipline,"  which I take to be:  pay full attention to what you're doing now.  He describes a friend who was sharing a tangerine with him.  The friend was talking and listening to him about some future plans, while absentmindedly eating slices of a tangerine. He wouldn't be finished eating one slice before he was taking the next one out of the fruit. Hanh wrote:  "[He] became so immersed [in our conversation] that he literally forgot what he was doing in the present...He was hardly aware he was eating a tangerine...It was as if he wasn't eating a tangerine at all."

Another mundane example may make clear what I'm getting at here:  Why do we wash dishes?  So we'll have clean dishes for breakfast the next morning? Or so we can sit down and relax after supper?  Are we really washing the dishes, or are we getting ready for something in the future?  Clearly, we are not washing dishes!  Hahn says, when you wash dishes, wash them! Pay attention.  Wash them for the sake of the experience of washing them. Be fully involved in washing them, feeling the warm water over our hands, the soap suds bubbling on the plates and glasses, the lemony smell of the dish soap. The squeaky sound they make when rinsed. The beauty of a clean plate drying in the rack next the the sink....

But if we're thinking about the book we want to read after supper, we've missed that important experience, with all its wonderful sensory inputs.   Sure, the dishes got washed, but we missed out on what could be a spiritual moment in the day.  Or like Hahn's friend, we missed out on the sensual experience of eating the tangerine because we were thinking about some future event while the tangerine got eaten.  

Bottom line:  When we multi-task, we're missing out on the essential experiences of each task. We're also not performing each task with all our gifts. We're missing out on life moment by moment.  But if we're mindful of what we're doing in the present moment, not only do we do that task well, but we also enjoy it far more than if we were doing something else at the same time.

Given a choice, I'd prefer to practice mindfulness.  Let others multi-task to their hearts discontent. I think I'll start as soon as I check the email while returning  a couple of phone calls...

Summer Sunday Dinner at The Moorings

First thick and heavy Sundays papers – Globe, Times, and funnie papers

Dagwood and Peanuts, Gasoline Alley, Dick Tracy, Mary Worth, Prince Valiant

Coke in small clear-green glass bottles, cold from the ice box

Dubonnet for women and scotch and beers for men

Club crackers and Triskets and fresh clam dip

Then family gathered around the heavy dining table

Under the interested bright blue eyes of Elisha

Nan’s grace…Bless this food to our use…Lives to Thy service

Bop carving a huge roast of beef

On oval channeled silver platter

The first dark outside slice always for Herself at table end

The last cut, rarest of all, for Himself at table head

Always a small slice of outside crusty peppered fat for grandchildren,

With roast potatoes dripping with blood red juice

And warm Yorkshire pudding mysteriously mixed alone by Hannah

A brimming silver gravy boat attached to its base

Fresh corn on the cob we kids had picked moments ago

           in the hedged kitchen garden

Under warm summer sun and soft southwest breeze

Fresh-picked bright green peas or string beans or orange carrots, soft and buttery

Pickled watermelon rind especially for an uncle

And creamed onions to be avoided by grandchildren

For dessert fresh vanilla ice cream home-made at Petersen’s

Runny with warm chocolate sauce.

Then too-quick thanks and we scattered

To race our 12s on the glittering blue Bay.