Brain Clarity, Multi-tasking & Wim Hof Breathing

Last week we had a great lecture by Judith Lewandowski, Ph.D. in our Entrepreneurial Fellowship at the University of Notre Dame ESTEEM program. The focus of the talk incorporated many strategies to maintain balance and avoid the common pitfalls of attempting multitasking. We also drew out how we spent our time for the whole 16 hour day to get a better handle on where we have opportunities for productive time. We did a revealing exercise on the foolishness of trying to do two things at once. Anyone can do this if you go to the YouTube video “switch tasking is a thief." In this video, Dave Crenshaw gives us a simple exercise. First, we write out the phrase “Switch-tasking is a thief” (davecrenshaw.com), and then write out the numbers 1-21 and time yourself for the sum of writing both sets. Most people got a time of 25 to 35 seconds. We then we're given the task to write out the first letter of the phrase followed by the first number in the number set then back to the second letter and then the second number and back-and-forth. This second try resulted in chaos, and most people made many errors and finished in 60+ seconds. This phenomenon is called switch tasking. When we try to read email and messages while doing work with music on that has lyrics that are brain interprets, our mind is continually switching between attention. I was amazed at how many errors our table group made with this relatively simple task. The take away is simple; focus on one thing at a time, do it correct the first time, finish it, and “tie it in a bow” and move on.