Multi-Resting

We've all heard of multi-tasking

We’ve all heard of multitasking.

The art of doing more than one thing at a time. Something we thought we needed to be good at…even great at. Hey, I love multitasking, don’t you?

I can eat lunch, at my desk, while answering an e-mail and talking on the phone. All at the same time. I’m getting so much accomplished. Go me!

Hogwash.

In fact, according to VeryWell Mind, an award-winning resource for reliable, compassionate, and up-to-date information on mental health, research suggests that multitasking can actually hamper your productivity by reducing your comprehension, attention, and overall performance.

In a recent article published by VeryWell Mind, Kendra Cherry, cites that our brains lack the ability to perform multiple tasks at the same time. When we think we are multitasking, we are actually going back and forth between one task and another. In other words:

• Multitasking is distracting
• Multitasking slows you down
• Multitasking impairs executive function
• Multitaskers make mistakes

As a Process Consultant, I’m trained to slow things down a little, to ask lots of questions.

This is often why we get calls at Design Group International. People have a challenge, and they need help thinking it through. An organizational or personal  knot that is super tight and they don’t know what to do next to untangle it.

A relationship that needs to be healed with a colleague and they are upset. Complex challenges that impact the head, heart, and hands. 

A really great place to start is to quiet the mind, calm the heart, and still the hands. What you might call multi-resting. Helping these three centers of energy (to use Enneagram language) be at peace…be non-anxious…be quiet. 

When we are non-anxious, we can think more clearly. We can feel more deeply. We can act more justly.

When we are non-anxious, we are able to listen to others more actively. We are able to help someone more specifically. We are able to partner and learn alongside them.

We live in a complex world, and these are the skills (listening, helping, and learning) we need to navigate it.

Multi-resting can help you get there. Multi-tasking can not. 

If you would like to learn more about the listening, helping, and learning approach, please give me a call me at 616.516.9870, or schedule a 30-minute discovery call , or simply email be at lons@designgroupintl.com.

I’ll be present and honored to listen and learn more.

Lon L. Swartzentruber

Design Group International
CEO & Managing Partner