Thanks to the third toe on my left foot, I’m finally following the experts’ advice and giving multitasking the boot.
I owe this bit of wisdom to the clunky black Velcro’d one the surgeon handed me after a 30-minute procedure to straighten the demon toe.
“No weight on the foot,” he said soberly, and left me to figure out the details.
“Not to worry,” I told my daughter, who thought I’d be bored silly stuck inside, watching icicles drip from the back gutters. “I’ve got a million things to do sitting down.”
It was no lie. First, taxes. Then, file cabinets that had not been cleared since 2005, to say nothing of all the paperwork remnants from my husband’s death last spring.
But it was not so much the available workload as a non-fiction book from the library that set the tone for my recovery. According to “The Power of Slow,” being sidelined could save me from frenetic multitasking and lead me on to a life of incredible productivity and peace.
The trick, it suggested, was to focus completely on one thing at a time. No more leaping up from the computer to take the clothes out of the dryer and deposit them on the living room couch for folding by way of a trip to the refrigerator for a snack. “Boot camp,” I realized, was the perfect opportunity for me to practice staying in one place, attention completely fixed on the task at hand.
Being in a boot also lent itself to another of the book’s suggested strategies: delegation. Finding others to do the task was one of its “101 ways to save time in our 24/7 world.”
“Going to the grocery anyway,” announced my sweet neighbor Jane. “Tell me what you need.” And in she came a few hours later with a bag of laundry soap, bananas, milk, peaches and coffee.
Of course, there were still temptations. I could still sit at the computer and open multiple windows, leaping from program to program, task to task, opening e-mails while I composed a letter or talked on the phone. All these are forboden activities in the World of Slow.
Empowered, I suppose, by the rush of slowly emptying the dishwasher plate by plate while seated, I resisted multitasking also at the computer. Instead, I drilled down through the online tax organizer, e-mail window shut, and laboriously entered the expense for every copy run, every registration fee paid, every postage stamp purchased for my business in the previous year.
I must admit there is a certain joy in immersion, actually staying in one place long enough to see a multi-step process through to the end.
There is so much joy, in fact, that I’d like the power of slow to continue long after the stitches come out and the boot has gone to the land of just-in-case medical equipment on the unfinished side of the basement.
Boot long gone, I plan to sit still, working just one window at a time, drilling down as I should. With an occasional peek at e-mail. But only every 10 minutes or so.
Copyright 2010 Pat Snyder
