Conscious Choice Seattle: Singular Sensation

January 2005 | Back Woods

Singular Sensation

The calming value of one, just one, ball up in the air

by Danni Keller

I am in my car between jobs with an hour to kill. I decide to walk to the post office. I can get that done and still be parked downtown for my next assignment. If I really get in my rhythm, I can answer some text pages at all of the red lights while practicing my Portuguese via CD and gobbling lunch.

Most of us move through the day in a buzz of activity. Multitasking seems perfectly normal. But how often do you find yourself exhausted by your level of output and pledge that some day soon you have to stop doing so much multitasking? I frequently hear people expressing how much happier they would be if they could only slow down.

From time to time I am aware of an internal voice that prefers to be less frenzied: “Danni, what would happen if you stopped the incessant multitasking?”

I began to give the idea pause. I decided to embark on a week of single-tasking. Would my head explode? Would I end up with a backlog of tasks requiring that I stay up late finishing things one ... at ... a ... painstaking ... time?

I woke to a request that I take a last-minute assignment. The job started across town in an hour, and I had yet to wipe the film from my post-Thanksgiving-weekend eyes. My week of single-tasking was off to a challenging start. I took a breath and reaffirmed that it was possible for me to hold true to my commitment to single-task yet still make it out the door in 30 minutes.

Single-tasking requires an amazing level of discipline. As the week unfolded, I became hyper-aware of the willpower necessary for me to truly do one thing at a time. While doing almost any task, the urge to add another always surfaced: Making a meal, I would remember a call I needed to return. I had to constantly monitor myself and redirect. That simple voice revisited to coach me, “Finish making the sandwich, then you can dial the phone — but not while you are eating.”

On Wednesday my pager stopped working, so I wasn’t receiving my usual text pages until Thursday morning when it began working in the car. The backlog of the previous day’s 20 pages came through all at once, and I had to resist the urge to read and respond at the red lights.

I am most apt to multitask while driving, eating, cooking or on the phone. As a child, I was a notoriously slow eater; sometimes my family would rise from the table and begin to clean around me. During college this pattern changed, and I would scarf down meals in a hurry, eating amidst cacophonous activity. Single-tasking required me to undo many years of habit; consequently I was shocked to find that not far beneath resides that little girl who takes a surprising amount of time to eat a bowl of cereal.

In a few days I recognized a shift beginning. For one thing, I noticed myself enjoying conversations more.

At its core, I discovered my quest was squarely aimed at training my mind to single-task. Multi-tasking is just a symptom of the barrage of ideas appearing in my mind incessantly. Can I learn how to “single-think”?

Here’s what happened. The decided lack of topic-juggling in my head led me to feel calmer The effect was subtle yet magnificent:

On Friday, standing at the line at the bank, I noticed a mural wood etching of a sailor pensively anchoring his ship. How many times had I been in this bank and not seen it? Strange, I realized that I didn’t bring my pager with me, atypical.

In my 20s, I spent considerable energy trying to peel away the overactive layers of my persona. I was searching for that calm, non-busy core the gurus say resides at the center. What I realized after years of yoga, and long quiet stretches on my bike, is that at my center resides a slightly neurotic, task driven Jewish girl from New Jersey.

Even though I am marvelously efficient at multitasking, I am left unsettled. I assume this is a common sentiment. At the end of the day more errands are ran, calls made, and details handled, yet we are not done.

What is the cost of all of this efficiency to the quality of our lives? I may have arrived at a new path with this single-tasking business. The concept that I can do one thing at a time, calmly, suddenly feels within reach.

Or maybe it is just that I can do more of just nothing at all.

Danni Keller is a Seattle-based American Sign Language interpreter and writer.

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