This morning I PR’ed (Personal Record) on the Erg, or as I like to call it the “Magical Sliding Instrument of Pain”. I rowed 5881 meters in 30 minutes and my split broke the dreaded 2:30 by just seconds. Now, for all you flat-abbed, bicep-bulging, custom-calved whippersnappers out there chuckling at my sub-sub-sub-lightning speed, keep in mind I am 53 years old and 40% of my spine is being held together by 3 V-clips and a dead guys bone putty (God rest your soul and I thank you, sincerely). I have had terrible workouts for the last two weeks. I was embarrassed to hit save on my times, though I am the only one who ever checks the memory. At first, I blamed it on my Christmas holiday nose dive into chocolate in all of its wonderful symphony of forms. Then I blamed it on distraction as my mind has been preoccupied by a very exciting data visualization I am developing. For those of you who fell asleep in the middle of that sentence, yes- I said exciting, dare I say, thrilling data visualization. Trust me. It is revolutionary. I expect oohs and aahs commensurate with the Rockets’ Red Glare finale on the Fourth of July on Lake Union when I finish. But I digress. Then I blamed it on stress. There are many changes happening at home and at work. Finally, I blamed it on the block I have been having on a piece I am writing. But then this morning, as I was hammering out the meters to rousing beats of Ugly Lights, Gone and Restless, in the shadow of Mount Rainier on the glassy surface of Lake Washington (OK that part was in my imagination. I was in the spare bedroom.), I realized that I wasn’t plugged into an audiobook. I wasn’t taking advantage of this extra 30 minutes in my life to listen to a book and learn, or think about why the data wasn’t aggregating correctly, or prioritize the top 10 things I had to get done today. I was just rowing. Empty-headed. Focused on nothing more that my breath, the pull of my arms on the bar, the force of my legs against the footrest, the slide of seat. I was flying and my head was empty. That is a blissful thing for someone like me who is always thinking. That thirty minutes to be solely, viscerally engaged is indescribable. It is a hard reset, refreshing and cleansing.
Somewhere along the line, I bought the whole “multi-tasking” snake oil. I even tried to do it for a very long time, decades really. I convinced myself that I could do it. The truth is that I could get a lot done but none of it was really my best work. My best work came when I was focused on doing one task very well. Ironically, it was also more efficient. It turns out, according to Earl Miller of MIT, that when we try to multi-task, we are really just shifting back and forth between each task (http://fortune.com/2016/12/07/why-you-shouldnt-multitask/ ). Starting and stopping does not allow us to think deeply or creatively. It feels like we are doing two things at once because often the two things we are trying to do are using the same parts of our brain like talking and emailing. So, the switching back and forth seems fluid. It seems like we are doing them at the same time. Yet, we are, in fact, starting and stopping repeatedly. If you have ever tried to listen to a recording in a series of segments, you know that you have to back the recording up to remember where you were and what was being said every time you restart it. It is hard to follow a recording in stops and starts. Your brain does that too as you shift between tasks. So, there I was, to my amazement, on track to break 5900 meters when I started calculating in my head how many meters that would be in 5 minutes. You wouldn’t think doing division in my head would effect the motions of my arms and legs, but that is exactly what happened. As I turned my focus from my breath and body to my beloved math, my rate dropped precipitously. (I should make a graph of that. It would be a work of art. I would call it, “The Inverse Relationship Between Rowing Pace and Math Computational Practice”.) So it wasn’t stress or chocolate that was to blame for my substandard times these past two weeks. It was distraction. Trying to learn from an audiobook or make a list for my day, shifted my focus and, since working out and critical thinking aren’t related, the shift was anything but seamless. Shifting my focus back to my breath and the workout changed everything. As a bonus, it turns out that the reset I got from unplugging for that 30 minutes not only resulted in a Personal Record but it had an amazing impact on my day. I solved a complex problem I have been working on and created something I am truly proud of. Brain science was in its infancy, possibly even pre-natal, in my youth. Apparently though, my dad knew something instinctively that Earl Miller has since scientifically validated. My dad was a little less scientific and a little more poetic. Whether you call it multi-tasking or half-assing, you’re better off if you do one thing at a time and give it your full and undivided attention.
If I hadn’t done that one math problem, I could have broke 5900 meters. There is always tomorrow…
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