The art of doing one thing at a time

For most of my twenties I wore my multitasking like a badge. I drank coffee while answering emails while half-listening to podcasts while walking to the train. I was, I told myself, efficient.

I was, in truth, exhausted.

It was a friend who said, casually, over dinner: You know multitasking isn’t really a thing. You’re just switching very quickly. And every switch costs you.

That sentence rearranged something for me.

What single-tasking actually looks like

When you wash the dishes, just wash the dishes. The plate, the water, the soap. The sound of the running tap. Nothing else.

When you drink the tea, just drink the tea. Notice the warmth on your hands. The first sip. The second sip.

When you walk to the post office, just walk. No podcast. No music. Look at the trees. They are doing something.

Attention, taken slowly, becomes a kind of love.

A small experiment

Pick one thing tomorrow. One ordinary thing — making breakfast, folding laundry, brushing your teeth. Do only that for the duration of it. No phone. No second activity. Just the doing.

Notice what your mind does. Notice what your body does. Notice how strangely difficult, and how strangely lovely, it is.

This is where slow living actually lives — not in the candles or the linen, beautiful as those are. It lives in five minutes of complete attention to a thing you have done a thousand times before. That, I have come to believe, is the whole practice.