The Spiritual Practice of Mono-tasking

We live in a world where multitasking is not only encouraged, but rewarded. And I've fallen into that, taking pride in how many different activities I can juggle at once. But it's a false reality. It's really more like, “look at how many things that I can do at the same time while doing them all halfway or badly.”

How many of you are multi-task masters, yet never seem to finish anything, or if you do finish something, it's just sort of meh? Let's see some hands.

The most important thing that I have learned these past 6 months during my COVID artist residency is that I don't have to juggle every ball put in front of me! I repeat: I don't have to juggle every ball put in front of me. This is a very important lesson.

The main result of this is that I have finished more projects that I really am proud of and believe in than I have in a long time. The reason for this is that I've done them one-at-a-time. I stopped juggling multiple projects and focused on a single one where I could give it my quality time and attention. And this made all the difference. It also made completing things faster, because I wasn't always being sidetracked by something else I had going on.

The 1st project finished was my long promised gong book. It's just been edited and I am going to dive in for a 1st rewrite based on the editing suggestions.

The 2nd project was my new music album, The Sea We Swim In. This was 2 months of solid work, putting in 5-10 hour days. I couldn't have done it if I was always jumping off to work on other projects.



The 3rd project is a 2nd book based on my studies of time (those at the Gong Summit in 2019 got a preview of things). This is a bit different, as it is based upon my ongoing research, so I haven't worked on it steadily. I have set a tentative finish date for spring 2021. It's very intense, so I can only work on so much at a time because I need to spin things around in my brain box for a while to make sure I can clearly articulate them for the reader.

The 4th project is another album of music. I have 4 completed tracks, but they are diverse and will most likely end up as single tracks or part of different projects.

Between all this, and related to my recordings, I have been studying composition, arranging and music production in order to create music vastly different than what I have created before. I am satisfied that I have succeeded and want to keep expanding this. As a side note, the music I am currently creating is directly related to (and influenced by) my studies of time and the book I'm writing. So the things I do are all interrelated, which is as it should be, because I do believe that all is one and one is all.

In working mainly on one project at a time, I have been able to make it my meditation, my spiritual practice. And most importantly, I have had a lot of fun. More fun than I have had while trying to juggle multiple projects at the same time. I like that and want more of that.

How have you spent the past 6 months?

How has it changed both you, and the way you do things?

Where are you going from here?

 ~ MB


Over the past 9 years and 3 different blogs, I've written almost 500 blog posts. That's a lot of my time and energy devoted to putting my thoughts and ideas out there on the internet for you to read. If you've enjoyed reading them, and have gotten value out of them, please consider a donation. You'll be helping me keep writing for hopefully another 9 years. Thank You ~ MB.





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