multitasking

I’ve been falling all my life. Always in unexpected places, on flat surfaces, and in awkward ways. Many have confessed to feel embarrassed when associated to my person when I awkwardly lose my balance on the street. But there are some valuable lessons from being unbalanced on flat surfaces….

The calming life by the sea, with the boats swinging in the wind have brought me into a calm mindset every time I set foot out of my temporary house when I arrived in Wales 1 year ago. I was happily walking around the marina one morning and feeling energised by my new surroundings, when I noticed a bike shop. In a very personal impulsive way, I swiftly changed direction towards it. Not that I am a biker, or intended to buy one just yet… Then, 3 meters from the entry, this invisible chain was connecting only two small pillars amongst 10 unconnected ones. I stepped confidently forward and suddenly I see the sky disappearing from my eyes and metamorphosing into red bricks and textured gray concrete. Elbow and knee meet the ground in one perfect slow motion fall… and blank.

I entered the shop not deviating my route after the event, and the owner looks in awe at me after witnessing this most amazing fall… I believe that was the first time I heard it is what it is in this country, this dreadful sentence that would mark so many more awkward moments the year ahead. Let’s just say I had a bruised elbow (dor de cotovelo as we say in Portugal) for the next month and a half.

Just as much as burro velho não aprende línguas, or literally translated, old donkey doesn’t learn languages (how I love the nonsense of literal translations), the sentence “it is what it is” is the perfect example of an excuse to not change what you can. You may not avoid a fall, but you can totally manage how to react to it, because it is what it is, until it isn’t!
How to master the art of falling in 3 steps:

1. If you have to fall, do it gracefully: Those who have witnessed, more than I like to admit, these countless (un)expected moments, have said I fall in slow motion. Somehow I will unconsciously predict it will happen a few moments just before it does, almost like a muscle memory resulted my long experience mastering the art of the fall. If you have to fall, react quickly, do it calmly, and embrace gravity for the natural law it represents, even if it doesn’t feel like that when you are in mid air.

2. Get support: When you fall, the slow motion effect will assist in getting support. Avoid falling face flat on the floor. The only time your face interacts with the floor is upon seeing it coming dangerously close. It is ok to show you are human in the moment of the fall, as terror will run through your veins and you will most likely show a deformed expression mirroring your immediate unbalanced existence. However, your existence is the one of a warrior, so fall on your knee and elbow / hand. Fall as it was meant to be and conquer the floor. The pain will be sharp but you will not feel it just yet. Accept it is natural and inevitable, which brings me to the most important part: the cliché – it doesn’t matter how you fall, but how you get up!

3. Get up in a single motion: Never stay down for long. With the same speed and calm you fell, get up in a single movement. Almost like break dancer, make three synchronized movements that end with you standing tall with feet on the floor. The expression on your face must also transform into normality again. You will be a bit bruised, and so will your ego, but a small period of temporary amnesia will help you get through the initial shock and social embarrassment, allowing the pain to build only in your body. Then laugh it out to disguise the pain, and carry on reacting as if nothing happened. Others with you, may feel as embarrassed as you are, so it is in a way a social sharing experience.

One year ago “It is what it is” quickly passed through the bike shop into the work place. Everyone at work uses it to justify the events resulted from running a complex and fun operation where every day is different and the unexpected happens. Despite the healing and comfortable benefits this sentence brings to ones acceptance of surrounding circumstances, it is what it is… until it isn’t, and won’t settle for anything less. The unexpected never truly is!

I was once a proud multitasker. I still try to trick my colleagues by saying I am a natural… Spoiler alert: MULTITASKING IS A SCAM, an urban myth spread across to break you down slowly!

Multi-tasking1 — Positive side: I am an artist!!

Queen of procrastination and distraction on top of this, and struggling in this moment in time, specifically due to the piles of work needed done and delivered yesterday! Here is how I’m failing at being productive:

1. Overthinking snow-ball effect – Getting stressed when I know I’m falling behind on my schedule. Either because procrastination kicks-in, or (un)expected things require my immediate attention. If these two fail, my brain goes into self-sabotaging mode. I start overthinking about what I should be doing, what I want to do to prove myself I am capable of achieving something, thought that is strengthened by my super self-criticism. As a result, I feel overwhelmed and focus my attention on something that takes that painful sensation away, just to delay it and let it build up in the background into a crushing snowball. Human behaviour 1:1 I guess. Or at least is my excuse to self-sabotage a bit more. That is why so little achieve greatness!

2. Focus on the end goal – It may sound counterintuitive, but this is one of the main feeders of my lack of focus. I tend to take out the binoculars and look on the end-goal alone. Because of this amplified vision, I miss the true dimension and distance, as well as the mountains, valleys, canyons and rivers in between. It is a reflex of wanting knowledge with no discipline for the process. To feel passionate about that vision, but having no idea or plan how to start. I suck at planning. The simple task of planning a dinner, is condensed in booking a place 10 minutes before and whatsapping the ones involved. You can imagine how well that works with my fellow UK friends.

3. Be a collector – Someone once said that as Human beings, we spend half of our time collecting, and the other half deciding what to keep. My grandfather was a master at this. Fierce entrepreneur in his mid 30’s, business and family man in the second half of his life with an outstanding consistency in his actions, always in line with his beliefs. Very genuine man, my grandfather.

As for me, I am a collector, a fierce collector, have experimented several jobs and careers, some of them very short. Have tried dozens of different hobbies (started yesterday to learn python for example, hopefully will finish the course). I feed on the novelty, on the experience and on learning new things. However, I am a terrible juggler (also tried this as a hobby for exactly 3 days).

4. Self-sabotaging – related to overthinking, to procrastination, or derived by a deep fear of not achieving something? Whatever it is, I’m an expert! My boredom scale builds quite quickly. I have constant fights in my own head, self-sabotage vs belief I can be much better; thrive to accomplish a specific goal vs thinking of a million other things to do that take priority for being less important!

Would love to understand better self-sabotaging behaviour. Is there an intrinsic undermining human nature to crash? Or is it based on the “energy saving” theory of evolution, to avoid taking more effort than one actually needs to survive as a species? Whatever it is, I want to kill it!

Either way, once you pass the jumpstart of any task, it somehow becomes a motivator. Just that inertia is a pain to overcome.

5. Be available to people – Fixing problems feels amazing, and working with others to brainstorm solutions is a very good learning tool. Because if this I struggle to say no when asked for help. Once someone told me I am good at serving people. Despite dreading that observation (independence is my thing!), I need to eat up my pride and admit that is a little true. Others expectations, unfortunately, do have an effect on me, specially when I feel I’m helping somehow. I feel a responsibility for fixing things. I just need to channel that same energy towards myself. Should be easier, no? Need a trigger for my selfish gene!

I have tried all the tricks in the book to focus. Meditation, to do lists, gratitude lists, pomodoro timers, visualization techniques, piano music, jazz music, no music, disconnect the phone, clean the house, exercise in the morning, read and learn something, drive with no route, write my mind and my heart out into a paper in hope to make sense of it. If only setting aside time for deep work was easy…

There was a time in my life I was following religiously James Altucher’s life hack into luck. I have to confess I was much more focused, but at that time in my life (2011), I was less busy. Maybe I will give it another go… if I find the consistency to restart a daily ritual.

Any other tricks?