To ACT is to FOCUS

You know—don’t you?—that multi-taking doesn’t work.

The brain is not capable of simultaneously performing two or more tasks that require our focus and attention. Instead, a kind of toggle mechanism allows the brain to switch from one task to another. The switch is rapid, so you think you’re doing two things at once and oh-so productive, but you aren’t and you’re not. In fact, toggling leads to errors, and the tasks take more time than if you were to focus on each individually. Toggling also, over time, leads to a special kind of exhaustion. As all of us supposed multi-taskers know.

Why am I writing about this now?

Because all of us who care deeply about and want to be meaningfully involved in the crucial issues of the day have been forced into exhausting, debilitating—and inefficient—multi-taking. We are so overwhelmed with what is wrong, with what needs our attention, with what we need to learn more about, with how to be part of the struggle(s) and the change(s), that our brains are toggling toggling toggling.

Our focus shifts from moment to moment: another outrageous statement by the man in the White House, another heart-stopping virus statistic, another video of federal troops in city streets, Russian hackers, white supremacists. And then there are those concerns we had, those fights we were fighting, before all this. Remember climate change? Criminal justice reform? Homelessness? Food insecurity?

Like you, I am overwhelmed.

I cannot do everything.

I cannot do nothing.

I must do something.

And to DO something, I must focus. I must put a stop to all this exhausting and inefficient toggling. I invite you, even just for the next 24 hours, to do the same.

What is helping me focus today on an issue I care deeply about (one that intersects with race, COVID and MOTUS—that’s the acronym for Monster of The United States) is this new album by my fellow Food for Lane County Dining Room volunteer, Steve Gibson. He wrote the songs beginning in 2011 when he started volunteering. They tell of the people he met and his own efforts to stay in the fight, to do the work. (It’s the final song on the album, Compass.)

Here’s the link to the album.  All proceeds go to Food for Lane County.

And here’s the link to Steve’s live performance tomorrow (Thursday, 7 pm Pacific).

Listen. Contribute if you can.

We can’t do everything. But we can FEED ONE PERSON who would normally go hungry. That is what we can do today.