Don’t Blame Mental Pause

Lately I catch myself in mid-stride, trying to remember where the heck I was going. Or in mid keystroke pondering what I was getting ready to type into the browser. I'd just thought of it in the kitchen for heaven's sake.

To add insult to injury, the other night I cut my finger reaching for my phone on my kitchen counter. I'd just turned the lights off but I'd seen the phone out of the corner of my eye as I shut off the lights.

I forgot I'd left a knife out next to the phone. I reached for the phone and sliced myself pretty good. OOPS.

My friends and I are all women of a certain age. Those dreaded mental pauses. We laugh a lot about our aging hormones.

The truth is that my hormones are extremely well-managed by my fabulous physician. My blood is balanced at the same levels as when I was thirty something. So I really can't use those mental pauses as an excuse for my mental lapses.

I decided to pay attention to my brain and flow for a few days. It didn't take me long to find the real culprit. Myself. My multitasking, focused-anywhere-but-in-the-moment self.

I admit it. I'm a multi-tasker. Always have been. But the digital age made it so much easier for me to get my fix. Even as I am writing a blog, I'm jumping onto social media. As I'm preparing a meal, I'm thinking about an article, running to my office to make a note. Of course once I hit my office I'm back on social media - just for a few minutes. But then I go back into the kitchen and can't remember what I was doing - or I forget what I was doing while I'm Tweeting away and something burns.

Sound familiar?

We all fall prey to the destructive forces known as distraction and multi-tasking. In my case - their impacts are pretty significant.

I experimented last week. I committed to focus on the task or moment at hand.

• I limited my social media sharing to specific hours of the day. I shut Tweetdeck and Facebook and everything else down in between those hours.


• I cleaned off my desk and only placed one project folder on it at any time. No distractions.


• When I was in the kitchen cooking dinner or downstairs working out, I didn't get to run back to my office to jot a note. I did keep a notepad around so I didn't lose the ideas.

I got more done last week than I have in ages. No mental pauses, no multi-tasking.

Why? Because I focused on a single task at a time. I didn't allow myself to avoid finishing some writing by hopping onto Twitter. I didn't get to avoid working on a client project by jumping off to do some research on the web.

We all know the dangers and distraction of multi-tasking. Yet multi-tasking is a natural response to today's accelerating world. Unless we take the time to stop, ditch the gravity of multi-tasking and focus.

Last week I remembered the power of focus, of single-threading my creative force.

Now if I could only remember where I put my Mifi card and power cord....