Getting Stoned At Work

It started out innocent enough. A sneak here. A quick break there. Just a short distraction. Nothing too harmful. No one has to know about it.

My name is Aly Lewis and I get stoned at work.

Okay, not literally or illegally. But every day I engage in an activity at work that 'hurts my IQ more than pot.'

It's called multi-tasking.

We're all guilty of it. Checking e-mail. Checking Facebook. Switching from tab to tab. Simultaneously writing three reports, checking CNN, reading my favorite satirical aid blog, composing my next eblast, and adding an event to the company calendar.

This, according to a recent survey, makes me dumber than being stoned. In an article my boss sent around (which I ironically opened immediately because I was obsessively checking my email), it lists Stop multi-tasking as the #2 best way to stay productive, stating, "Switching from task to task quickly does not work. In fact, changing tasks more than 10 times in a day makes you dumber than being stoned. When you’re stoned, your IQ drops by five points. When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women)."

Well, I've got the female thing going for me, but still, those numbers are pretty grim.

What's worse, is I can't seem to stop. Even while writing this post I've checked my email three times, went to Facebook on autopilot then chastised myself, and opened a new Pandora station.

I'm hooked.

If you'd asked me two years ago what I thought about multi-tasking, I would have said it's God's gift to people with ADD (of which I think I have a slight case). I would have said the constant change of pace keeps me alert. I thrive on variety. I thought I thrived on multi-tasking.

But over the last couple of years (my third and fourth years sitting in front of a computer eight hours a day), I've begun to think that maybe I'm doing myself a disservice. Maybe my constant task switching is dumbing me down.

Always one for challenges, I first realized I had a problem when I decided to test how long I could go without switching tasks.

It was a painstaking 42 seconds...

Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but sadly not much. As an introvert and a writer, I've always prided myself on my ability to concentrate and to get lost in a story. But it seems I just can't engage like I used to.

Sure, I can get stuff done. I'm a high functioning multi-tasker, as I'm sure I'd be a high functioning pothead. But that doesn't mean it's good for me.

The problem with multi-tasking, I think, isn't that we're doing too much, but that we're not engaging in the first place. Because our brains are swamped with information, we're not present. We're not engaging in meaningful work or in meaningful rest.

The cure?

Stop checking email? Stop checking Facebook? Stop playing Words with Friends?

Is that even possible?!

I hope so.

In the last three months I've made a vow to STOP THE TYRANNY OF MULTI-TASKING. To work on one project at a time. To be fully engaged and fully present with the work at hand.

It's tough. I've managed to increase my concentration time from ~42 seconds per task to about twenty minutes, more if I really get on a roll.

But I still have a long way to go toward the sanity of mind I deeply desire.

There are some great recommendations in this article and this article, such as scheduling email and taking time out to actually read something longer than a tweet. For specific advice on distraction free writing, this is the best article I've seen.

Another good place I've found to start is prayer. Because, really, this is a spiritual issue of slowing down to see the work God has for us, the work right in front of us.

How can I honor God with my mind if my mind is all over the place?

How can I enjoy meaningful rest if I don't learn how to turn off the distractions?

I'm reminded of the last stanza in one of my favorite poems by Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 2002:

"Teach me work that honors Thy work...

Teach me patience beyond work

and, beyond patience, the blest

Sabbath of Thy unresting love

which lights all things and gives rest."

I want to learn a patience not only beyond but IN my work that I may do work that honors His work and honors the mind He has given me.

Readers, how do you deal with distractions? What tips can you give a girl who wants to get clean at work?

You Are Not Alone In This

When I look back on my experience of studying abroad, being exposed to poverty, and questioning my faith, I see a lot of anger, outbursts, and alienation. I attacked people who didn't understand my newfound obsession with recycling, fair trade, even Cuba. I didn't know how to communicate the burning burning burning urgency in my heart to DO SOMETHING about injustice.

I thought I was alone. No one knew what I was talking about. Everyone else was a materialistic hypocrite.

Turns out that was not quite healthy. Or true.

Ironically, my newly expanded global worldview led to an implosion of sorts. A narrowing of my world and my interests. Every relationship, every conversation, every action became solely about me: my thoughts, my anger, my doubts, my responsibility.

I thought it was up to me to single handedly save the world, which I quite obviously sucked at. I thought I was the first person to ever be confronted with this dilemma.

In the middle of this all out war on my friends' and families' sanity, I read a poem by Wendell Berry in his book, What are people for?, that actually made me feel quite foolish for wanting to do it all on my own. It was the kick in the pants that I needed and yet subsequently ignored as soon as I read it. (I told you I didn't exercise the healthiest coping mechanisms). Here are a few lines that stood out to me:

“Seeing the work that is to be done, who can help wanting to be the one to do it?

But one is afraid that there will be no rest until the work is finished and the house is in order, the farm is in order, the town is in order, and all loved ones are well.

But it is pride that lies awake in the night with its desire and its grief.

To work at this work alone is to fail. There is no help for it. Loneliness is its failure.

It is despair that sees the work failing in one’s own failure.

This despair is the awkwardest pride of all.”

I lived there, in that awkward pride, for a good couple of years, allowing my deep desire to serve and do good to divide and exclude instead of combine and include. I forgot I was supposed to be fighting against evil, oppression, alienation, and loneliness instead of my country, my social class, my friends, my family, myself.

When I began interning at a non profit called Plant With Purpose, where I now work, I was forced to remember that I was not alone in this fight against poverty.

Plant With Purpose has been around for over 25 years, partnering with the rural poor to overcome poverty. I know I latch onto some pretty unsound ideas from time to time (really, I really think I’m fat at 110 pounds?), but I would have had to have been monstrously dense or delusional to continue to believe that I had invented social justice and no one anywhere was doing anything of any value to end poverty.

It’s a lesson I’m still learning (not that I still think I invented social justice), but to work together. Learning that people are more important than ideologies. Learning that cooperation is more important than my beloved creativity. Learning that we are in this together.

Last night I watched the premiere of 58: The Film, a new campaign spearheaded by Compassion International to end extreme poverty. It’s a collaboration of ten Christian non profits working together to DO SOMETHING about poverty.

I admit I’m biased because I work at one of the ten organizations, but I think it’s pretty darn inspiring to see a group of organizations (competitors) joining together not to compete for donations or prove they have the best and most buzzwordy poverty alleviation strategies, but to motivate us all to reject not each other but our apathy. To embark on a radical rebellion against selfishness and competition when we’d rather rebel against our God-given responsibility to love our neighbors well.

It is the opposite of this awkward pride. It is an example of Wendell Berry’s “good work” that “finds the way between pride and despair.” By which, “we lose loneliness: we clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us.”

Thank you to everyone in my life who has reached out their hand to me and ushered me out of loneliness, pride, and despair, and into the good work we were created to do.