The Lost Art of Doing One Thing at a Time

is also a residue. When you leave a task unfinished to glance at something else, part of your mind stays behind, still chewing on what you abandoned. So you are never fully on the new thing either. You become a person who is everywhere and nowhere, which is a tiring way to spend a life.

    Attention is not a tap you turn on. It is a muscle you train, and like any muscle it grows weak when it is never asked to hold.

Attention as a muscle

The encouraging part of this framing is that muscles respond to practice. If