Banish multitasking and concentrate on the job at hand

Feeling overwhelmed? Easily distracted? Too busy to stop? Performance expert Dr Adam Fraser shows us how to get back into the flow and focus on the task at hand.

“Multitasking is impossible,” Dr Adam Fraser says. “What we’re actually doing is switch-tasking. We can only give our conscious attention to one task at a time. In our society of instant gratification, iPhones and Facebook and a thousand distractions, people are losing the capacity to control their attention.”

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Dr Fraser uses the term “flow” to describe a performance state where we have a clear goal, a calm mind, positive emotions and optimistic thoughts. You can find flow in any of life’s daily challenges — via work, socially, doing sport or hobbies, even domestic duties. Here are Dr Fraser’s tips on reaching this Zen-like state.

Have a clear goal

The brain needs clear goals so it can pool all its resources and focus. “Take a deep breath and relax,” Dr Fraser says. “Make a strategic, big-picture list of where you are trying to get to at the moment, and the most important things you need to accomplish. Then look at all the activity you have to do in your day, and if it’s not related to what you are trying to achieve, dump it. Make a list of the small steps that you need to do, prioritise them and knock them off one by one.”

Be present

The mind is calm when it is not looking to the past or future. “Practise being present with tasks,” Dr Fraser says. “Close your email, turn your phone off and get that one thing done. When you’re on the phone, don’t clean out your inbox. In conversation, focus on the other person, completely. Research shows that presence builds trust and rapport.”

Positive emotions

“One of the biggest tickets into the flow state is to manage your emotions,” Dr Fraser says. “Most people are not aware of the emotions they feel. They wake up with a certain emotion and very quickly that emotion turns into a mood and over time that mood becomes a temperament.”

We don’t need to fake a good mood to get into one: “Emotional intelligence is not about insincerity. It’s about becoming self-aware. It’s about asking yourself: ‘What is my emotional state and how can I get into a better one?’,” Dr Fraser says.

“If you’re feeling angry — why? Ask yourself, ‘Will anger help me get what I want from the situation? No. It will alienate the people around me so they won’t help me. If I stay calm and remind myself of the bigger picture and put myself in the other person’s shoes then I can have empathy, tolerance and compassion around the situation.’ If you’re feeling apathy and boredom, how can you find enthusiasm and passion for the situation?”

An optimistic mindset

“If you approach a challenge thinking, ‘I suck at this, it’s not going to go well, I’m not having a good week,’ you’re not going to get into the flow with it,” Dr Fraser says. “Whereas if you think, ‘Yeah I do this really well, I’m a really good worker, I’m smart and I’m capable’ — you’re chance of flow is far greater.”

According to psychologist Dr Mark Seligman, optimism can be learned. All we need do is change our explanation style.

When an event occurs to us or around us we explain it to ourselves on three levels:

Permanence: Is this something that happens all the time or is it rare?
Pervasiveness: Does it affect everything (global) or does it affect very little (specific)?
Personalisation: Is this event due to me, or is it due to others?

“I could watch the news and say, ‘The world has gone insane, this always happens. We’re all doomed,'” Dr Fraser says. “I’ve made it permanent, global and internal. Optimists make bad events temporary (‘It’s a rare event’); specific (‘It affects a small part of the world’); and external (‘It’s nobody’s fault, luckily it’s nothing to do with me’). Studies show that our explanation style dramatically affects our happiness.”

Ready to practise the Art of Flow?

“You know you are in the flow when you feel stimulated, you are actively engaged in the task at hand, and hours pass like minutes,” Dr Fraser explains. “It’s the opposite to overwhelmed.”

For more information, visit www.dradamfraser.com.au.