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Snickers' One Thing is smiling.
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2022, still smiling
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In Chapter 5 of this book, “Multitasking”, Gary Keller writes about Stanford professor Clifford Nass, who deemed himself a poor multitasker, and who had been in awe of those who could do it well. Wanting to learn how they did it – to learn best multitasking practices, as it were – in the summer of 2009 he did some research that revealed surprising findings:
Multitasking is a lie! They were lousy at everything (44)!
I relate to Professor Nass. This finding is especially important, encouraging, and vindicating to me because I felt the same sense of inferiority as he felt. Now it's heartening to know that I wasn't inferior after all.
During the period in the red box that ended when his research began, I was going through a personal hell. I was in a brief, toxic disaster-marriage in which my wife tried to gaslight me by intimating that, because I had a sharp, focused mind, there was something wrong with me. I didn't multitask; I focused on one thing until it was done or resolved. I didn't care about balancing many things; I cared about zeal, about focusing on one thing and getting it right. Like a bulldog, I persisted until a thing was done. I was, and still am, tenacious.
She, and others in her camp who had been deceived by the Multitasking/Balance Lie, characterized this tenacity as "Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder" (OCPD). They tried to pathologize my strength, to make it seem sick and wrong, to make my order seem like a disorder, and to make their disorder seem orderly. Because there were so many of them, I wasted a lot of time and money considering whether they might be right.
The situation reminded me of that great quote from the book of Isaiah:
"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" (5:20)
Multitasking is a lie! They were lousy at everything (44)!
I relate to Professor Nass. This finding is especially important, encouraging, and vindicating to me because I felt the same sense of inferiority as he felt. Now it's heartening to know that I wasn't inferior after all.
During the period in the red box that ended when his research began, I was going through a personal hell. I was in a brief, toxic disaster-marriage in which my wife tried to gaslight me by intimating that, because I had a sharp, focused mind, there was something wrong with me. I didn't multitask; I focused on one thing until it was done or resolved. I didn't care about balancing many things; I cared about zeal, about focusing on one thing and getting it right. Like a bulldog, I persisted until a thing was done. I was, and still am, tenacious.
She, and others in her camp who had been deceived by the Multitasking/Balance Lie, characterized this tenacity as "Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder" (OCPD). They tried to pathologize my strength, to make it seem sick and wrong, to make my order seem like a disorder, and to make their disorder seem orderly. Because there were so many of them, I wasted a lot of time and money considering whether they might be right.
The situation reminded me of that great quote from the book of Isaiah:
"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" (5:20)
It also reminded me of that famous quote by Saint Anthony the Great:
"A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.'"
Fortunately our counselor was a good, honest man. He recognized our situation for what it was: a bright man with exceptionally solid work habits and "a heart of gold" (his words) entangled in a bad marriage with an abusive woman. After she abandoned counseling once he began to focus on her, despite his Roman Catholic background, he advised me bluntly to divorce her.
I was shocked. It was not the outcome of marital counseling that I had hoped for or expected. Instead of acting on his advice, I waited for the opportunity to reconcile, and worked. After vowing that divorce wasn't an option and that legal separation was as far as she'd go, in late July of 2009 she contradicted herself and divorced me . . . right around the time when professor Nass was doing his research.
Meanwhile there was plenty of suffering to go around. In retrospect, we see that the whole country was suffering from a burst real estate bubble and economic downturn. And as an Economist, I feel this correlation between the popularity of balancing/multitasking and our economic suffering is no coincidence. As Keller points out in his fifteenth chapter on productivity, people who focus on their One Thing are highly productive, while people who try to multitask are . . . well . . . not. They're lousy at everything.
No wonder mistakes were made in real estate lending, buying, and selling, with those silly NINA and NINJA mortgages: at the time we were a nation of scatterbrains, and we still are. Just as we've suffered a Narcissism Epidemic, we've also been suffering a Scatterbrain Epidemic.
Will we ever recover? With Gary's and Jay's help, we may. In writing this short, easy-to-read book, they've done us a huge favor in helping us regain our senses. Now if we would only read it. Maybe this review will help, too. Reading the book sure helped me. I hope this review helps you, and that you'll get your own copy of the book and help spread the good news.
In addition to the book, they've built an excellent accompanying web site complete with background research details, all the diagrams from the book, video, a blog, and much more, which I encourage you to visit. Because it's so generous and complete, I'll not rehash here what can be found there. Instead, here's a list of take-aways that were especially helpful to me:
Respectfully submitted,
Kris Freeberg, Economist
Making End$ Meet
Contact
"A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.'"
Fortunately our counselor was a good, honest man. He recognized our situation for what it was: a bright man with exceptionally solid work habits and "a heart of gold" (his words) entangled in a bad marriage with an abusive woman. After she abandoned counseling once he began to focus on her, despite his Roman Catholic background, he advised me bluntly to divorce her.
I was shocked. It was not the outcome of marital counseling that I had hoped for or expected. Instead of acting on his advice, I waited for the opportunity to reconcile, and worked. After vowing that divorce wasn't an option and that legal separation was as far as she'd go, in late July of 2009 she contradicted herself and divorced me . . . right around the time when professor Nass was doing his research.
Meanwhile there was plenty of suffering to go around. In retrospect, we see that the whole country was suffering from a burst real estate bubble and economic downturn. And as an Economist, I feel this correlation between the popularity of balancing/multitasking and our economic suffering is no coincidence. As Keller points out in his fifteenth chapter on productivity, people who focus on their One Thing are highly productive, while people who try to multitask are . . . well . . . not. They're lousy at everything.
No wonder mistakes were made in real estate lending, buying, and selling, with those silly NINA and NINJA mortgages: at the time we were a nation of scatterbrains, and we still are. Just as we've suffered a Narcissism Epidemic, we've also been suffering a Scatterbrain Epidemic.
Will we ever recover? With Gary's and Jay's help, we may. In writing this short, easy-to-read book, they've done us a huge favor in helping us regain our senses. Now if we would only read it. Maybe this review will help, too. Reading the book sure helped me. I hope this review helps you, and that you'll get your own copy of the book and help spread the good news.
In addition to the book, they've built an excellent accompanying web site complete with background research details, all the diagrams from the book, video, a blog, and much more, which I encourage you to visit. Because it's so generous and complete, I'll not rehash here what can be found there. Instead, here's a list of take-aways that were especially helpful to me:
- The Focusing Question: "What's the ONE THING I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?"
- Going Small: shrinking focus down to a pinpoint, to One Thing. ". . . when you know where you're going and work backwards to what you need to do to get there, you'll always discover it begins with going small" (209). (For help with such backward planning, see the Lifetime Savings Plan page.)
- The Domino Effect: not just a linear chain reaction, but an exponential one. Smaller dominos can knock down larger ones. "Highly successful people . . . line up their priorities anew, find the lead domino, and whack away until it falls" (16).
- Extreme Pareto: It's possible to do a Pareto Analysis on your Pareto Analysis. In other words, don't just do a Pareto Analysis once. Do it iteratively, until you're down to your One Thing. (See Figure 5.)
- Days to Form a Habit: 66 (page 58).
- Willpower is highly perishable. Do important stuff when you're nourished & energized.
- Short and Long: How to go out of balance well. In your personal life, go short; in your professional life, go long (81).
- Five Balls: "Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity." Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it bounces back. But the other four are made of glass (82).
- On Going Big (Chapter 9): I needed that. I appreciated the examples. "What you build today will either empower or restrict you tomorrow" (89). See Figure 14, "How Big Is Your Box?"
- Happiness is about meaning and purpose. "Happiness happens on the way to fulfillment . . . . The surest path to achieving lasting happiness happens when you make your life about something bigger, when you bring meaning and purpose to your every day actions" (144).
- Write down your goals and keep them close (155). Ahem.
- Block time to do your One Thing - four hours a day, plus weekly planning time. Oh, and remember to take vacations. Actually, plan them first (162). ". . . the most successful simply see themselves as working between vacations" (164).
- The Three Commitments: 1) Mastery Mindset, 2) Best ways, and 3) Accountability. Figure 32, on the difference between Accountability and Victimhood, was my favorite figure in the book.
- Gary Keller's definition of wealth: "I believe that financially wealthy people are those who have enough money coming in without having to work to finance their purpose in life" (142). So wealth is defined by your purpose.
- The Four Thieves (Chapter 17): The first thief is the inability to say no. I have always been mindful that following The Straight and Narrow Way meant one Yes and innumerable No's . . . a No to every turnoff on that road . . . so I have always been mindful that life is an apophatic journey, that there's a positive side to being negative. I appreciated the affirmation of that in this book.
Respectfully submitted,
Kris Freeberg, Economist
Making End$ Meet
Contact
