Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Multi-tasking or Setting priorities


If much of your work is on the computer, you have probably grown accustomed to having more than one window up at the same time. As you work, you may get email notifications that you need to check, a notification from Messenger, and the phone may ring with an important call. If your boss shows up at the door, you stop what you are doing and focus.

You may feel exhausted at the end of the day. You might think you did not accomplish much. However, you are a multitasking champion. Such is life in the 21st century. Are you able to multitask? Answering such a question positively on a job resume will help. Some people have suggested that multitasking is good for the brain.

Studies of the human brain have long fascinated me. Some of you might remember studies of the Left and Right brain. On the physical side, I find it fascinating that we are able to do so much with the firing of the neurons in the brain.

Is multitasking so good for the brain? Sandra Bond Chapman[1], director of the Center for BrainHealth, does not think so. In fact, it is quite the opposite.  

"Multitasking is a brain drain that exhausts the mind, zaps cognitive resources and, if left unchecked, condemns us to early mental decline and decreased sharpness. Chronic multi-taskers also have increased levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, which can damage the memory region of the brain." 

It looks as if the brain has a design that involves doing one thing at a time. What feels like "multitasking" is actually more like mentally switching from one thing to another since it is impossible for us to do two things at once. If you are talking while driving, whether with someone in the car or the phone, you might blow past your exit or drive 20 miles without remembering how you got there. That frequent switching back and forth from task to task actually makes you less efficient, less focused and less productive because you are only thinking about those things on a surface level.

The solution, according to Dr. Chapman, is to focus on one thing at a time. She calls getting things done sequentially "Single-tasking," focusing completely on one task before moving on to another. When we are able to filter our thinking to focus only on what is most important at that moment, we can experience increased productivity and enhance our ability to think strategically. Our brains can become more efficient and our output of higher quality when we devote all of our mental resources to what really matters.

We may multitask because we are not able to set priorities for the use of our time and energy. It requires some attention to yourself and to your situation to assess what truly matters most right now, and do that. This process begins to sound like much that we learn in spiritual formation.
In any case, if the design of the brain is toward focusing on one thing at a time, we might expect this principle to show up in our spiritual formation as well. After all, we believe, do we not, that the whole person is connected -- body, mind and spirit -- to God? Nevertheless, like the rest of our lives, we are often prone to spiritual multitasking. We can slip into thinking that keeping busy and gathering more information in matters related to church and Bible are signs of spiritual maturity. Churches tend to add more and more activities to the schedule. Some devout people feel like they are failing spiritually if they are not involved in multiple programs for learning and mission. It is easy for us to become distracted, exhausted and burned out trying to multitask great things for God.



[1] Chapman, Sandra Bond. "Why single-tasking makes you smarter." Forbes Website. May 8, 2013. forbes.com. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
 

No comments:

Post a Comment