Is Multitasking Real?

Sherlock Holmes, at a key moment in the TV version of "The Three Gables" with the incomparable Jeremy Brett, pauses in listening to an old lady's account of her grandson's murder and says, surprisingly, "This cake is delicious."  He has consciously shifted focus from the usual rapt attention he pays to every detail of the case to another, much more trivial present-time moment: what he is having for tea.

I thought of this scene in part because Maria Konnikova in her book Mastermind presents Holmes as the model of mindfulness, a term I question elsewhere (Jan. 2 post). She also asserts that multitasking is a myth since, as in the example above, we actually to shift our attention from one thing to another; we are not really able to attend to two things at once.

This is not to say we can't walk and chew gum at the same time or drive and listen to music, since the latter rarely requires concentration. Listening to music is not a task. Texting or using the cell phone is a task requiring attention and has no place when a person is driving.

A friend who often telephones us on her way home from work uses a headset, not a cell phone, but it is obvious that she is not giving good attention (especially listening) to the person (me) at the other end or to the road.  I would like to say, "do one thing or the other, and please wait until you get home to call us (unless it's an emergency)."

A student of mine was busy putting away groceries in the family kitchen--I could hear annoying noises in the background as we spoke--and I suggested he call me back or do the unloading later.  Talking to me (I suggested) was important. This is not a statement of vanity but of fact: he has things to learn from me and needs to pay attention and remember them. If he tries to divide his attention from what we are saying to the kitchen chore, he will be at some level frustrated, unfulfilled.

He replied, "Oh, I'm in to multitasking." It was then that I remembered Sherlock's remark about the cake, the author's comment about multitasking, and my dislike for the whole idea of pretending to do two things well at the same time.  Don't we have enough distractions in everyday life in our effort to communicate? Why create more?

Of course, one can be content to do two things haphazardly, mindlessly, perhaps hurriedly, but this is spiritually dangerous. What do I mean?

I mean we need to slow down and be fully present to one another in every conversation, in every human encounter. To be present means to be patient enough to listen and to stay with the other person before turning our mind over to something else.

A phone conversation is not a task on the level of washing dishes or even driving a car--things we do to get them over with: it is a personal exchange requiring that we be fully attentive to what is happening in the reality of the present moment.

That is mindfulness and it is real; multitasking is not.

What is Mindfulness?

Because I purposely detached myself from news about the fiscal cliff, the Rose Bowl, and New Year's hoopla, my year began very peacefully; even though I attended a Jan. 1 open house, I was totally relaxed, a good omen as I start 2013.

How can this peaceful spirit be maintained?  One clear way is by attention to the here-and-now in the daily practice of meditation. It is called mindfulness: knowing that I am in the present moment, aware of only one thing at a time.

Maria Konnikova in her new book Mastermind uses Sherlock Holmes as an example of mindful thought. I found her article "The Power of Concentration" in the New York Times last month.  She says the famous fictional detective, by silently concentrating on one problem at a time, is a master of unitasking or what "cognitive psychologists mean when they say mindfulness."

I like her comments about the folly of multitasking, which (she rightly observes) is a myth: in "multitasking," we really shift our focus rapidly as we move from one task to the next. We don't devote as much attention as we should to any one thing.  But the single-minded concentration on an issue is not really mindfulness, as conventionally understood.

The type of spiritual mindfulness found in the Buddhist tradition as well as in contemplative prayer in the Christian West has nothing to do with thinking and analyzing, as Holmes does; the mind is not active but passive. The goal is no-think: the absence of ideas so that the person who meditates clears the busy mind and is fully in the present moment. He or she might be, as I was yesterday, able to transcend possible stress and tension by an awareness of one's surroundings.

There can be, in mindfulness, a sense of the timeless present, the goal of prayerful meditation. Thomas Merton wrote, "Eternity is in the present. Eternity is in the palm of the hand."

So I don't think mindful meditation, though it might produce cognitive improvements, including an increase in happiness, is really mindfulness at all.  And the estimable Mr. Holmes is not a model of how to find inner peace, though he may be helpful in the concentration required of focused thinking.

But let's please not let such thinking be called mindfulness.