Choosing between multitasking and mindfulness
Being present in the moment saves a good deal of time
Can you multitask? Most people I know do some sort of multitasking in their lives. Indeed, we live in a day and age where are constantly busy (not necessarily productive) and multitasking seems like the obvious way to save our time.
The super mom should whip up a perfect soufflé at the same time as she is teaching her children math, and oh, she must have been answering work emails the entire time too — all the while looking gorgeous with not a hair out of place. The mere thought of this appalls me. I’d be giant mess if I tried any of that.
There’s a certain pleasure in being in the moment. For me, I don’t really know another way. When I’m in the kitchen, and I’m enjoying how therapeutically my butter and sugar get whisked together and how lovely my eggs look when I add them to the mixture, I can barely think of anything else.
I open my phone with the sole purpose of finishing my audiobook, but I’m just caught up in WhatsApp groups and messages, and before I know it, I’m browsing my LinkedIn and someone shared a post about this amazing little school in Africa … you get the picture
Focus gives me mental clarity and the task at hand ceases to become just a mundane chore, it transforms into an experience. Instead of feeling tired, I feel genuinely happy and refreshed, flushed with a sense of accomplishment.
I like doing things one by one, fully engaged and aware, almost meditative. I like to find the joy in whatever I am doing, get lost in it, learn from it and appreciate why I did it.
Bombarded by a million distractions
For a person like me who thrives in this kind of concentration, being bombarded by a million distractions affects my mental well-being. I am now realising that someone like me must learn to manage their own peace of mind and practice mindfulness very consciously, or suffer having it taken away gleefully by the myriad distractions we constantly face.
Let me give you a typical scenario. I open my phone with the sole purpose of finishing my audiobook, but I’m just caught up in WhatsApp groups and messages, and before I know it, I’m browsing my LinkedIn and someone shared a post about this amazing little school in Africa … you get the picture.
The biggest culprit for me is probably email, which because it is of a professional nature, feels somewhat urgent, although in reality most of the email we receive is neither urgent nor important (taking a leaf from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits).
There’s that email saying that an invoice hasn’t been cleared and that one asking me for the lesson plans, and because I hyperventilate if I have too many pending tasks, I feel obliged to reply straight away. My audiobook sits waiting patiently and my mind zooms from one app to the other.
Deep sense of joy and pleasure
The above obviously is not ideal and I am working towards bringing more mindfulness and focus into my life, because when done with intent and clarity, anything we do brings about a deep sense of joy and pleasure.
For me, it is just about eliminating distractions and knowing when to postpone things and when not to open a certain app. Similarly when I am sitting, playing or talking with the girls, or reading a book to my little one, it completely destroys the experience for them if I look over their shoulders into my phone.
And when we do have that focus, we tend to do well in whatever we are doing. That obviously, is the beginning of excellence, which when becomes a habit, leads one to greatness.
Being present in the moment and doing a task efficiently the first time also saves a good deal of time. As I gradually move towards healthier habits and a more conscious usage of the 24 hours allotted to me in a single day, I am realising that paradigm shifts are brought about by just implementing small doable habits on a daily basis.
And because multitasking was never my thing anyway, let me start with eliminating distractions, being fully aware of what I’m doing and doing things like they make sense to me, one at a time.
— Mehmudah Rehman is a Dubai-based freelance writer