Use Multitasking to Enhance your Focus

Vision, discipline and focus. With these three life skills in abundance, there's very little that we can’t do. I like to think of my life as blank slate upon which I am free to express myself as I choose. But what if you or I lack one of these skills? Does missing of one of these hold us back from becoming who and what we want to become? When I look at them, I can see where a deficiency here does indeed hold me back. For me, its focus. I have always had a distinct vision of what I want to do with my life, and medical school has taught me a lot about discipline (though I'm still learning). What really holds me back from my aspirations becoming reality is my lack of focus. Maybe it’s that I have a touch of ADD, and maybe it’s that I just have a busy mind, but it seems that throughout life, I've had trouble focusing on a task, and completing tasks. Of late though, I've been becoming much more productive through the art of conscious multitasking. This really first occurred to me when I realized that I constantly broke up my study by doodling, or checking on something on the internet, or just walking around my apartment. I just couldn’t seem to focus for more than about 20 minutes at a time. And so, as you can imagine, my productivity was horrible. That’s when I decided to consciously multitask. Instead of just performing random activity when my attention needed to focus, I had other things I could do that would be a productive distraction. Now I can set out things at the start of the day, and when I feel my attention drift, I pay bills, answer email, write my blog post, or study something entirely different for about ten minutes. Even on medical rotations, there is often an opportunity for some calculated distraction (ie, reading a handbook on downtime, etc). This has allowed me to indulge my desire to multitask, and actually become more productive. I realize that not everyone is like me. I have friends who need to be distraction free in order to concentrate. But if you’re someone who finds it maddening to try and focus in a “quiet study environment”, then maybe it’s time to stop fighting your nature. Put on some music, go with your flow, and be productively distracted. [photo via businessweek]