Soul Sculpting Projects: Monotasking with God

“It is not necessary to have great things to do. I turn my little omelet in the pan for the love of God.” These are the words of Brother Lawrence, a French Lay Brother who lived in the 1600’s.

Lawrence’s spiritual practice was simply to do all of his daily tasks for the love of God and in the company of God. He practiced God’s presence in the kitchen, in town as he ran errands, and later in life as a shoe repair man. Lawrence found that of all the Christian practices, the habit of doing all our tasks for and with God was the ‘shortest and easiest way’ to connect to God.

Lawrence says, to Practice God’s Presence we must focus our attention on the task at hand and quiet all thoughts that are unrelated to that task. The skill of monotasking was an essential part of Lawrence’s practice.

Monotasking means: do one thing at a time.

Multitasking is when we do multiple tasks at a time. Say, checking email, talking on the phone, straightening up the room, and eating a snack –all at the same time. It is remarkable the number of things we can do at once -or can we?

Our brains are actually not built for this level of multitasking. Because we have two lobes in our brain (right side/left side), research out of France found that we can do two tasks, sort of simultaneously. Each lobe takes on a task. But when we add a third task our cortex begins to overload.

What actually happens is not that we do multiple things simultaneously, but that we continually switch attention. We read an email – switch- take a bite of food- switch- catch a phrase of the phone conversation -switch- pick up our shoes -switch . . .

For all this switching we pay a price. Here it is.

Research findings on Multitasking:

1. Our brain gets tired faster. Switching attention is work.

2. We work more slowly. We have up to 40% decrease in productivity. Drivers on cell phones take longer to reach destinations.

3. Quality of work decreases. Our IQ lowers. Error rate increases up to 50%. The more complicated the task the more the rate of error increases.

4.  If we add the task of eating we increase the likelihood of overeating.

Some folks object to these research findings because they feel they are really good at multitasking. Consider this research study out of the University of Utah.

Individuals who self reported as ‘above average’ at multitasking were the same individuals who scored the lowest on multitasking tests.

There are 2% of the human population who actually are good at multitasking. I am not one of those 2% and 98% chance you are not either.

If you look at it carefully Brother Lawrence was multitasking, too.

Turning his omelet and thinking of, talking to God.

But he had two sides to his brain so he could handle this level of switching attention.

Our Sculpting Project is: Each day select one ordinary task and the practice God’s presence while we do it.

What tasks?

Cooking, cleaning-up, doing laundry, getting dressed, driving are a few of the possible choices. (Imagine a drive where every driver around us was monotasking and enjoying God.)

How do we practice God’s presence?

Talk to God about the task. Ask God’s help in the task. Enjoy God’s company. Listen to God.

In this good company we may want to notice the novel; the beauty and wonder we miss when we are inattentive to our tasks.

When our mind wanders away from the task and God’s presence Lawrence gives us this advice.

• Don’t be hard on yourself – mind wandering is just human nature.
• You must practice the presence to learn this skill.
• When I (Lawrence) began “sometimes a crowd of extravagant thoughts took the place of God. I set them aside gently and returned to my conversation with God.”

Soul Sculpting Project: Monotasking with God

For one task each day:

Give full attention to the task and keep company with God as we do it.

May we grow in our skills to monotask and Practice God’s Presence.