Walking across Central Park one morning, I saw a dog running toward me carrying both a stick and a ball in his mouth.  Needless to say, he was a rather large dog, and his mouth managed to contain both toys at once.  What struck me was that it seemed pretty much impossible for him to thoroughly experience and enjoy either the stick or the ball when his attention was on keeping them both in his mouth at once.

That got me to thinking about how natural it has become for most of us to multi-task in our daily lives – juggling at least two, if not three, things at once.  The fact that the dog couldn’t possibly play with either toy when both were in his mouth demonstrates one of the problems with multitasking.  It reminded me of recent brain research that has shown that our brains really can’t multitask efficiently, no matter how it may feel to us.  It appears that our brains do better when focused on one thing at a time, when our attention has only one task in front of it in any given moment.  It seems that, while we can get two things done at once, we can’t get two things done at once excellently. 

Given that I do mindfulness meditation, and am also someone who multitasks a lot of the time, I find that I feel the difference between being truly present to what’s in front of me and mostly present to what I’m doing if I’m doing two things at once.  I also feel the importance of having mindfulness as a practice to return to, to give myself time to be with just one thing for awhile and to remind myself of the benefits of being truly present to what’s unfolding in my experience in any given moment. 

And so, for this week’s experiment, I invite you to play with the differences between multitasking and mindfulness.  For example, notice your experience when you’re engaged in two things at once: the quality of your connection to what you’re doing, your ability to concentrate, the degree to which you enjoy the experience.  Then, take some time doing just one thing – allowing yourself to become completely absorbed in it, and only it – and notice the quality of your experience when you do that. 

For some of us, it’s quite alien to do just one thing at once, so you may find yourself bumping into unexpected discomfort – or unexpected enjoyment.  If this happens, allow yourself to notice what emerges and bring a mindful awareness to it.  Instead of doing anything to change your experience, simply take in what’s unfolding with an open curiosity.  As you do this, notice if your experience changes in any way: if the discomfort eventually moves through and becomes something else; if enjoyment deepens; if thoughts tumble into your mind and get in the way of paying attention to your experience; if you find that you begin to soften and more deeply enjoy doing just one thing at a time.

As with all these experiments, be sure to leave judgment behind.  This is one more opportunity to become mindfully conscious of how you move through your world and of what enhances your experience and what detracts from it.