The Multitasking extinction

When was the last time you ate your meal without looking through your phone’s messages, updating facebook status or reading the latest tweets or flipboards?

If you are a more conventional multitasker, when was the last time you ate by yourself without reading a book, a magazine article, even the cereal box or checked your correspondence?

We all have fallen for the modern panacea of multitasking. The more tasks we get to do at the same time, the more accomplished and productive we feel.

I read an article the other day, curiously during my lunch break, regarding the lie behind the so called multitasking. Different studies have shown that the brain can only focus in one task at a time, and when we attempt to do two or more things at the same time, our brain switches attention back and forth between activities, usually with the cost of low performance… we attempt to do so much, that we actually do not do anything to a 100%.

And while performance does not really matter for activities such as eating, walking or reading, it plays a major role during work hours or performing tasks such as driving or operating equipment and machinery.

And although productivity and efficiency are two major issues during this analysis, I want to focus right now in something a little simpler; something that multitasking has robbed us of: the pleasure of enjoying the NOW.

I attempted the experiment of eating breakfast on my own for a whole week trying to not do anything other than being mindful about the food and the eating experience.

The first day, I was completely restless; I took my phone a couple of times and put it back just to end up chatting with my mom on whatsapp. The next day, I began the meal with a different approach, I expressed my gratitude for the food in front of me and started enjoying the color and texture of it, I did not do it during the whole time, but I enjoyed my breakfast and felt satisfied by the end of it, and day after day it became so much easier to be present in that simple ritual. I started noticing the different flavors of all the ingredients; I looked out and realized how blue the sky was and how beautiful the light was refracting through the window. I became completely aware of myself and my surroundings and started looking forward to the moment I would sit to just have breakfast by the end of the week.

On my last vacation visiting my dad, we planned a one day trip to West Palm Beach. We packed bread, turkey breast and cheese, hummus and some green veggies to make our lunch on the go. As we stopped in a bench close to the marina, I started preparing our sandwiches, while listening to the birds, the sound of the waves and absorbing the smell of the ocean nearby, then my dad and I sat next to each other enjoying the present moment to its fullest, and I still have that memory engraved deep in my brain, because it has been one of the most special and spiritual moments we have shared as father and daughter, we laughed and observed the birds nearby... and we actually turned such a simple moment into a magic mental picture of peace and joy.

And although it might be hard to try to be completely present and do one task at a time always, it is nice to take a break from time to time to enjoy simple things: the wind in our face, the shape of a flower, the dimple’s on our children’s cheeks or the way our partner’s eyes change color with the light.

I invite you to put your cell phone down for a few minutes today and really taste the crispy sound and the juicy flavor of an apple bite.

Enjoy!