My daughter Irene returned from a talk by neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield informing us that multitasking decreases fluid IQ more than smoking marijuana, or losing a night’s sleep does.
My daughter, as intense as I am, walks around the house with her iPad, watching documentaries or TED talks or AsapScience (when she isn’t reading or studying.) Or sometimes—okay, mum, get real–lighter, less relentlessly educational stuff; she is a teenager, after all.
I keep telling her to do one thing at a time. Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might.
Delighted to have Baroness Susan Greenfield’s backing, I advised Irene to use the mundane things of life, waiting for food to reheat in the microwave, waiting for the kettle or the eggs to boil, as pathways into prayer. To ask for God’s wisdom and blessing on the next task, on how to do it best. To do a mid-day course correction if necessary. Repent. Ask God’s blessing, wisdom and guidance on the dreams and visions for which she is striving. Ask him for the big picture blue sky visions for her life, for guidance on her life’s work and for the path she is to tread which will be the precise intersection between her deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger. Thank God for his goodness. Breathe.
She said, “Mum, but praying through the day is multitasking too.”
I guess so. And it’s the only form of multitasking that’s scripturally advised: “Pray continually.”
You tap into the vast resources of a brain greater than yours. And somehow, that great kind brain comes to help you with ideas, wisdom and sometimes concrete external interventions, changing your circumstances from the outside, changing you from within.
And I guess prayer is the only multitasking that makes you cleverer.
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