The Twelve Monotasks

I read this book to help me with my focus. It discusses 12 things that you should single task. Multi-tasking has been the name of the game for years, but research has shown we (humans) aren’t really good at it. Getting back to doing a single task at a time is really important, and makes you a better thinker, friend, person, etc.

Below are the notes and highlights I made while reading the book. Each chapter focused on a different monotask. I liked how the author gave each task a mantra to help re-focus you to the single task at hand.

• Reading
  • Make a dedicated space for reading
  • If a thought comes up that distracts you during reading, write it down and get back to reading
  • Consider wearing noise cancelling headphones or earplugs
  • Mantra: Just Read
• Walking
  • Don’t listen to music or podcasts
  • Put phone in Do Not Disturb, or don’t take it with you at all
  • Try to connect with your body and the earth. Feel the movement of yourself. Connect with the long history of people walking the earth.
  • Mantra: Right Foot, Left Foot
• Listening
  • Being a good listener include gaining respect and trust, boosting confidence, making fewer mistakes, developing patience, learning something, improving relationships, increasing empathy, becoming more popular, gaining understanding, having shorter work meetings, and getting good advice.
  • Mantra: Listen Closely
  • Don’t multitask!
• Sleeping
  • Getting enough sleep improves our ability to pay attention, our cognitive skills, and our mood. Paying attention to sleep will help you pay attention to everything else in life.
  • Mantra: Sleep on Rails (When you travel by train you have to stay on the train tracks and follow where they run)
  • Reinforcements:
    • Wear yourself out
    • Clear your mind
    • Minimize distractions and disturbances
    • Stay in the zone
    • Bring awareness to caffeine consumption
    • Make difficult changes
• Eating
  • Mindful eating includes deliberate thinking, learning, and listening. Reflect on the hard work that went into your food: growing, preparing, transporting, selling, and cooking it.
  • It may also include listening, being fully present with your friends and family around the table.
  • Mantra: Food is Life
• Getting There
  • Mantra: Enjoy the Journey
  • If you are the driver, focus on the road
• Learning
  • Mantra: I’ve Got Room in My Brain for More
  • Celebrate learning. Mark the occasion, no matter how small, with a celebration.
  • Practice what we have learned.
  • Break things down into bite sized, manageable chunks.
  • Don’t be afraid to make a fool out of yourself.
• Teaching
  • Teaching will change your life and the lives of those around you.
  • Monotasking teaching helps us master our material.
  • Monotasking teaching also strengthens our attention since the task of teaching requires so much focus.
  • Mantra: Transmit On (Let’s transmit our knowledge to others, both for ourselves and for them)
• Playing
  • We all need to rest and recharge, and play is one of the most effective ways we can reset our bodies and our brains. Through play, we can get away from work physically and mentally.
  • Mantra: Play Away (Remind yourself to have fun)
  • Make time to play on a regular basis
• Seeing
  • Monotasking seeing helps us focus on the details that may get lost in the visual clutter of our lives.
  • Monotasking seeing also helps us understand context.
  • Monotasking seeing can help us see complexity, nuance, and subtleties.
  • Mantra: See Near and Far (Take breaks fro mall the “near” seeing we do – looking at screens aa few inches in front of our faces. When we look “far” our vision becomes expansive.)
• Creating
  • Mantra: Now it Exists!
  • Look for opportunities to multitask in a positive way, such as doing something creative alongside your kids while they do their homework.
  • Do new activities, get outside your comfort zone
  • Write your ideas down in a creative journal and come back to them every once in a while
  • Establish a creative space at home, or somewhere else where you can go to create
  • Set aside creative time
  • Cultivate positive encouragement
  • Be gentle on yourself
  • Don’t give up
• Thinking
  • Three objectives:
    • Recognize when others are thinking for us and we are not thinking for ourselves
    • We want to become more aware of when our attention is being redirected, taking away our thinking time
    • We want to enhance our ability to separate our thoughts from one another, sometimes our minds are a jumbled mess
  • Learning about yourself and how you do your best thinking
  • The ability to operate on instinct later
  • Better decision making
  • Indentifying when not to think (Sometimes we do our best thinking while do something completely different)
  • Mantra: Think [your name here], Think!