If only I was actually able to do seventeen things at once. So said the nutcase looking for an early grave.

Only one thing is needful. Only one thing, at one time, with all your heart and mind focussed upon it.

It can be personal, loving your wife or husband in tangible ways. It can be spending time with your kids and not two-timing them with your devices.

It can be a business related task.

Prayer of course. Wholehearted and unhindered by worries about ten other issues.

There’s a right time for everything, and when the time comes the gates should be locked to everything else so you can focus on ONE THING AT A TIME.

https://davidleemartin.com/the-myth-of-multitasking-and-doing-away-with-my-to-dos/

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00:00:01.690]
Well, today, I want to talk continuing in the vein of productivity and like living creatively fruitful lives. I want to talk about something that is I don’t know if it still is, but it certainly was at one time multitasking. And I’m not a big fan of multitasking. To be honest, I really you know, the man who wants to do 17 things at once, like who wants to have a heart attack. I mean, seriously, I find that the best advice that I’ve ever got when it comes to when it comes to organising and knowing what to do was advice that the Holy Ghost gave me in the scriptures.

00:00:56.140]
And no, maybe no surprise there. But in the story of Mary and Martha, just such an incredible story. And anyone who’s read it will remember Mary was sat at the feet of Jesus. Martha was freaking out, multitasking around the house, getting everything ready for all of the guests. And Martha gets angry and comes and says, Jesus, get Mary to come help me. And Jesus said, Martha, Martha, you’re troubled with many things, but only one thing is needful.

00:01:31.780]
And I found that that that expression, that idea, that concept of just one thing being needful at any given time is is is a great liberator from this endless pressure to perform. Because realistically, we can only concentrate on one thing at a time. It’s really quite, quite mythical to think that our brain can, like, rightly concentrate on several things all at once. It has to jump between them. And with every jump, it’s it’s a bit like it’s a bit like friction, you know, with every with every jump, we lose some steam.

00:02:18.160]
Yes. Something is lost in the transition. And so jumping between tasks all the time, like bouncing around as we try and accomplish things really can be quite counterproductive. And so for for myself, I found that the best way to do this, both in personal and business, like a personal professional, you know, there are things that we need to give ourselves to concentrate on both in our personal lives and in our business lives if we want to see fruit there.

00:02:56.530]
And I’ve just found that it is so much better to focus intently on the task at hand until we bring it to some stage of completion. Now, I’m totally aware that we can’t complete every single task we set out to do because the completion of a task may take several weeks, months or even years. But the fact is, we can break most tasks down into something manageable that we can accomplish and say, I can. I’ve done that. I’ve completed that in like one sitting or one day.

00:03:36.550]
And I’m one of the one of the most powerful ways in which certainly I feel as though I’ve increased my productivity. And this may sound very counterintuitive and there’ll be a heap of people with their day. Time is like searching me out, like to to knock down my door and tell me I’m wrong. But I’ve found that like doing away with my to do list has been hugely helpful to my my productivity. I think the problem was my to do list because I’m quite active, because I’m an idea man, because I generally do have several different projects underway at any one time.

00:04:20.320]
And I’m looking both to focus on family and ministry and business. You know, my to do list could just be like this long dream of Underfunds and all of those underlings would guide me on a daily basis. And I didn’t find I mean, as as much as a little deeper, meaning it might be quite nice when you take a box or cross something off the list. It really was just the payoff just was not enough for me. And and so I decided I’m going to just do away with my.

00:05:01.350]
To do list, I’m going to come each day and of course, you could plan this if you were if you were more organised than I am, but I just come each day and say, OK, if there is one thing that I could accomplish today, just one thing that I could do. And in the completion or accomplishment of that one thing, you know, I would feel as though this day were a success, that I’d made progress, that I’d move forward.

00:05:36.690]
What would that one thing be? And then, you know, it may be that you have some smaller tasks. It may be that that one thing becomes two or three things. But certainly you don’t want one of those gargantuan kind of catalogues of like every detailed thing that you could do in every realm of your life and have people go on about making five year goals and plans and 10 year goals and plans and all of that kind of stuff. I mean, I think there’s a there’s something to be said for having an eagle eye view.

00:06:14.370]
But when it comes down to the day, when it comes down to the granular moment, we really cannot do more than one thing at a time. And so generally, what I’ve what I’ve sought to do and as I say, this is really help me and and I write this today. I said each day you should ask if I could do just one thing today, the most important element of my business, my personal life, whatever. What would it be if I could just do one thing today?

00:06:55.800]
The most important thing, the most important element, whether it’s business or personal, what would it be? And if we can answer that question on a daily basis, then we have our to do list for that day. And he’s got one item on it, not ten. Yeah. And like several days of completing the one most important thing intrinsic to your growth, intrinsic to you moving forward, intrinsic to your expansion, intrinsic to your success. Several days of completing just that one thing.

00:07:35.730]
Each of those days will soon begin to add up. What if you applied yourself diligently day after day for three months, a year, five years, focussing your best time only on the absolute most high yield activities that you know will give the longest and greatest that the greatest long term fruit and results in your life and business? What if you were to do that? How might things look for you six months from now? And so that’s that’s it pretty much really just this idea of taking one thing, you know, debunking the myth of multitasking, saying, look, I even if someone else can, I I don’t want to I don’t want to do twenty things at once.

00:08:31.410]
I’m going to do away with my multiple lists have to do and I’m going to choose to lean in and do whatever the one thing is for this time, for this day. And I’m going to focus my hard on I’m going to focus my time on completing that one thing so I can move everything forward. Well, thanks for listening. Hopefully it’s been an encouragement to you today. If you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at Davidleemartin.com.

00:09:12.450]
Have a great day.