At this very busy time of year former GPS speaker Christine
Carter's Tuesday Tip seems especially timely-focus on one thing at a
time.
Source: http://www.christinecarter.com/
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Tuesday Tip: Focus on One Thing
at a Time
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Photo by Mark Hunter via
flickr
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In his awesome book The
Organized Mind, cognitive neuroscientist Daniel Levitin has quantified how
overwhelmed by information the poor human brain is:
"In 2011, Americans took in five
times as much information every day as they did in 1986 -- the equivalent of 175
newspapers. During our leisure time, not counting work, each of us processes 34
gigabytes or 100,000 words every day." How do we deal with this overwhelming
amount of stuff and information? We multitask.
But multi-tasking is the enemy of
focus. It stresses us out and prevents us from doing our most meaningful work.
The human brain did not evolve to focus on many things at once; it evolved to
focus on one thing at a time. And so the brain does not ever actually
multitask. It can't run multiple apps at any one time; it can only switch
rapidly between tasks. This rapid switching is a giant energy drain for your
brain.
When we just focus on one task at a
time, we're actually more productive in the long run, and we're less exhausted
at the end of the day. This is because multitasking exhausts more energy and
time than single-tasking does.
The first and most important step
to finding flow is to build yourself a fortress against
interruption, so that you can single-task
instead of multitask. If you can't concentrate, you can't be in your sweet spot.
Period. This week, find a way to single task -- to just focus on one thing,
without interruption.
Join the Discussion: What do
you need to do so that you are able to really focus on one thing at a time?
Share in the comments here.
May you be happy,
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Christine Carter,
Ph.D.