One of my many responsibilities as front desk manager at the yoga studio is to have clean cups and a full jug of filtered water for our students. One day, after I had been working there for only a few weeks, one of the massage therapists told me she had noticed that the jug was always full when I was working "It's funny, I can always tell when you're at the desk just by looking at the water".
As she uttered those words it dawned on me that I was indeed a bit obsessed with keeping the water jug full. Because of my many years in the service industry, I felt the need to always have the "service" area fully stocked and ready to go. All of a sudden, in a slow motion slideshow of images in my mind, all of the habits that I had carried over from years in restaurants that were no longer useful at this point in my life were revealed to me.
One of these habits, ingrained in me through years of working bustling services, is multitasking. I have become an avid multitasker. I actually list this on my cover letter when applying for jobs as one of my better qualities, and I honestly believe that it's one of the reasons I always get a call back for an interview.
According to me, I am also pretty darn good at it. I assess the amount of the time things are going to take, prioritize them, and consider which ones will require my full attention and which ones won't, and then plan accordingly so that I can get all these tasks done almost at the same time. Brilliant right? Not always so...
The water jug is my perfect example. I place it under the faucet with the filter turned on and start refilling it, then I walk away to multitask: while the jug is refilling itself I will answer a few emails. But then the phone rings, or a class lets out, or a client walks in, or all of the above, and before I know it the jug is overflowing, wasting precious filtered water, as the fact that I am refilling it has completely escaped my mind.
Lately, I have started to reconsider my position on multitasking. We are currently bombarded with information and to do's at every minute of our life. The phone is lighting up every second with text messages, phone calls, tweets, or Facebook updates that we believe we need to attend to. As we are taking a shower we are thinking of what we need to be doing as soon as we get out of it, and while at work we are trying to figure out not only how to get everything done there, but also how we are going to manage our after work to do list at the end of our day.
I once had a friend confess that his years in the industry had led him to the point in which he found himself flushing the toilet before he was completely done peeing to ensure he was wasting absolutely no time at all.
All of these tasks and to do lists that we take on, make us believe we need to find a way -any way- to maximize our time, so we tell ourselves, if we can just do this while we do that, and at the same time start on that other thing, we can get everything done that much faster right? Actually, wrong!
Turns out, multitasking actually makes us less productive. Not only that, but research has also shown that it decreases our memory, creativity and our ability to focus on one thing and one thing only. According to the research by Dr Clifford Nask, professor of communications at Stanford University, multitasking makes us chronically distracted, and contrary to what we multitaskers might think, we are actually not that good at it after all.
http://www.npr.org/2013/05/10/182861382/the-myth-of-multitasking
After so many years of having to do a thousand things at a time in order to perform my job and excel at it, my transition into the yoga studio turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected. On my first few weeks, my manager kept telling me to "slow down".
Excuse me? You want me to do what? Of course, everything I have learned through years of studying and practicing yoga resonated with what she was saying, I just had never thought about it -let alone heard it- in the context of work.
Most people in our side of the world know yoga as a series of postures or exercises that when practiced regularly promote better health. There are however eight limbs to the practice of yoga, with asana (postures) being only one of them. The purpose of practicing all eight limbs, is to unite mind, body and spirit, as well as to connect with the universal. One of these limbs is Dharana which can loosely be translated as concentration.
As I pondered on the potential benefits of switching from multitasking to working on a single task I thought of Dharana. In turn, I realized that research or not, multitasking is the exact opposite of it. How can I honestly concentrate on anything, if when doing something, I am focusing on something else? And more so, how will I ever be grounded, and achieve peace (of mind, spirit or anything for that matter) if I keep constantly pulling my body and my mind in twenty different directions at the same time?
(This is a great article on the power of concentration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/the-power-of-concentration.html?_r=0)
So yesterday morning, in an attempt to become more grounded and more present, (and hoping that as a result I would also become more peaceful) I set my intention before my practice to not multitask. As I flowed from one asana to another, consciously guiding my body one movement and breath at a time, I committed to spend my day focusing on one thing at a time. I decided to use a mindfulness meditation practice I learned many years ago to help guide me along the very unfamiliar path of "single tasking".
As I was going about my day, I would mentally describe what I was doing. This would help keep my mind focused on the task at hand, instead of allowing it to slowly drift away into the future or the past without me even realizing it. As a bonus (or maybe in a subconscious effort to not go cold turkey and to still somewhat feel I was getting more than one thing accomplished at a time) I decided to do this in French (the actual language not the one used at the beginning of this post) in order to practice what used to be my second language and has slowly and sadly become my rusty third.
It was an amazing exercise in self study, or svadhyaya (one of the five niyamas or observances,
another of the eight limbs of yoga). I kept having to constantly stop myself from doing something else every few minutes -pr at least thinking about something else- because multitasking is such a part of who I am that most of the time, I don't even realize I am doing it .
So throughout the day, gently and compassionately, I kept tugging my thoughts and my actions back to the present moment and action. Amazingly, I not only finished my rather lengthy to do list at work, but was also able to tackle a few extra things. The day unfolded without any hint of stress.
It seems that the research is indeed accurate: multitasking does not increase, but decrease productivity. I found I was so much more focused and productive than I normally am, and all I had to do, was do less.
My late teacher, the amazing Larry Schultz used to say: " We all think we have so much to do. We don't have to do anything. All we have to do is listen to our breath." I think I am finally beginning to understand what you were saying Larry...
By the end of the day, I felt lighter, brighter and more at peace than the day before. Of course, the real challenge is to now keep up with the practice. But I am confident that one day at a time, or maybe one task on my to do list at a time, by practicing Dharana, I will become a bit more grounded, a bit more mindful, and if I'm lucky, a lot more peaceful.
In the kitchen, multitasking can be extremely helpful in order to get dinner ready on time. However, with some tasks, it is actually a recipe for disaster. If any of you have ever had to clean the stove after your milk boiled over, you know what I am talking about.
Marmalade is one of those things, where focusing on the task at hand, instead of trying to accomplish a few things at a time, can prove extremely helpful if not essential. At the stage where your marmalade is simmering, and it's composition is changing from a pool of liquid with fruit pieces floating around in it, to a thick, spreadable, sticky concoction, it is of utmost importance to focus one hundred percent on it.
Turn away for too long, or forget to stir it at just the right time, and your marmalade might end up scorched, leaving you not only sad and with a burnt flavored final result, but also leaving your kitchen smelling like crap, and your pot having to soak for days before you can successfully scrape all the burnt pieces off of it.
Below is the recipe, for a delicious lime marmalade, adapted from Bally Mallow's Forgotten Skills of Cooking cookbook. I hope you enjoy it!
Single Task Lime Marmalade
10 ea Limes, preferably organic, washed and scrubbed
3 quarts Water
5 cups Sugar
3 ea Star Anise
1 TB Ginger, minced
1 TB Rum
Pinch Salt
Place a small saucer and a few stainless steal spoons in the freezer.
Using a microplane, zest the limes into a stainless steel (or copper if you have it :)) saucepan. Juice the limes into the pan, and add the water and salt.
Tie everything that is left of the fruit, and the the star anise into a cheesecloth bag and add to the pan along with the ginger.
When the limes are cool enough to handle, take out the cheesecloth bag, and discard the star anise. Using a food processor, blend the remaining pieces of lime, with a little bit of the liquid from the pan, until the pieces of pith are no larger than 1/4 or an 1/8 of an inch. Use as much as liquid as needed to prevent your food processor from overworking. Add the mixture back to the saucepan, and bring back to a boil. Add the warmed sugar, stirring to dissolve, and bring back to a boil again.
Note: If you have never canned before, please see the links below for instructions on proper canning procedures.
http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/uga/uga_processing_j_j.pdf
http://www.foodnetwork.com/how-to/photos/how-to-process-jam-jars.html
http://www.foodnetwork.com/how-to/photos/how-to-process-jam-jars.html
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