There we go. I was getting everything done, and yet I was constantly losing myself in the process. Sounds dramatic, I know.But have you ever ended your day with a really drained mind, jumpy brain running across a 100 mental tabs, feeling irritated, exhausted? Right? You know the feeling. It's because we've been trained to believe that the more we juggle, the more we accomplish. And today, I'm here to challenge that idea, not as a productivity expert, not even as a speaker, but it's coming in from my personal experience as someone who got just so tired of doing everything together that she started losing herself in the process. Now before further ado, let me go ahead and share my screen right here for you. Okay. So we'll be in the presentation mode. I might not be able to see you all, but please feel free to drop in your comments and questions, and we'll address them at the end of the chat.

Now it's not that I cannot multitask. I can multitask, and there we go. This is how multitasking looks like. Right? On the surface, it's very shiny, very fast, very efficient, almost heroic. Even I thought that, you know, I'm at my peak form. I can multitask. See? Emails, calls, chat schedules, I can do everything together until I realized that I was not doing multitasking at all. I was, in fact, microscattering my brain across every possible corner of my life. That's it. I was just fragmenting. It wasn't multitasking. Now before I forget to introduce myself, I'm Sanya Chuk based out of Montreal, Canada. I work in technology consulting, and it is with immense pride that I say that multitasking is not encouraged in my area of work.

In fact, they added to the job description. Meetings, emails, presentations, ticket updates, all of this together when you have to decide that, okay, what are you gonna eat for dinner tonight? I've spent years in that loop. It has made me fast. It has made me efficient. It's even made me reliable to an extent, but it could not make me focused. It could not make me present. And above all, it did not even make me joyful. Eventually, I wasn't showing up to anything, at least not fully. Not to my work, not to the people around me, not even to my own self. Now this was my story. Let's talk science here. Let's talk some facts too. What does multitasking actually does to you? So scientists scientists have done a study which shows that multitasking is factual. It's not even a real concept.

Your brain, it has not been configured. It's not been wired altogether to multitask. The max that your brain can do is rapid switching, and that's exactly what we call as multitasking. So every time your brain switches from one task to another, what we are labeling as multitasking, it's leaving behind an attention residue. And when your brain is switching from one task to another, it's straining out on energy. Consider it like that. You know, you have a cell phone with a 100 background apps open. The energy gets drained faster. Yes. That's true. That's exactly what happens to all of us here. Now I did mention attention residue. What is that attention residue?

Let's say I skipped from one task to another, what I was actually calling as multitasking, a portion of attention was left in my brain. That is the attention residue. You've heard people saying that, hey. I'm so sorry. I don't have that great an attention span. Hey. I'm so sorry. My concentration power is really low. I cannot really focus. How can they focus? It's because their brain is constantly jumping from one activity to another that the only thing that they have left themself in themselves is their tension residue, which also decreases per switch. Imagine. Right? And it's not just that. There was a study done by the students at UC Irvine which mentioned that the brain takes at least twenty three minutes to regain its focus when we switch from one task to another.

Yes. Twenty three minutes. And we give that it the bare minimum of breathing space. So what's the result they're gonna be? Of course, we're bound to make more mistakes. We're gonna process information slowly and slowly and slowly. We're gonna lose out on clarity. We are gonna lose out on our calm as well. But, you know, still, what is the most scariest part? You do not realize it because you think you're being productive. So there we go. How did that shift happen to me now? It actually happened during a Zoom meeting. First off, I joined the meeting late because I was buried in an e mail thread. Next, when I joined the meeting late, I did not put myself on the DND mode, which led to a couple of my colleagues pinging me on MS Teams slides.

Hey. We have this issue. Hey. We have that issue. Can you look into it? Just what the job demands. Right? But what happened there? My camera was on. My face was there. I was listening to the client, but just with that attention residue. The only thing that I could say was that, okay. I've made the notes. I'll get back to you. Because I was not fully present in that moment, my brain was constantly jumping between all of these things, one after the other, one after the other, one after the other. And you know what happened at that point in time? The moment we switched off the call, it just shut down my laptop. It was like, you know, you throw water on a live circuit, it blows up. So did I. I completely blew up.

And the only thing that I had in mind was, I'm just not going to do this. I'm heading out for a walk. And the walk at that point in time meant just the walk. It was not like, oh, I'm walking and then there's music on, there's Spotify, there's Instagram. No. The only thing that I wanted to focus on at that point in time was just the walk. No tabs, no toggling, just the walk. And in actual in actual, it made me more peaceful after I came back. I felt more clear in my thoughts, and above all, I felt more energized. It was all because I gave myself the permission to do just one thing at a time. Just imagine the sorry state that we are in. We do not even justify to people, let alone ourselves, that, oh, it's okay to do one thing at a time.

It's because we, silly humans, we do not really realize the part that focus hold. And what is that part that I'm talking about? The first part is the part of flow. You've often heard people saying, hey, don't stress too much. Let it flow. Go with the flow. What is that flow about? So flow is a magical space where everything aligns automatically, where work feels effortless. Right? That's what flow is. I'll give you an example here. So I used to go to the gym, and my trainer used to be like that, okay. Your workouts are pretty good. But just try to establish that mind muscle connection. You'll find that self improvement. I was like, okay. Now what is that mind muscle connection? It's not any other form of activity or workout or anything. Right?

It is just putting your mind to focus on that one single muscle that you're working out on at that point in time. What will happen in that case is your sensors will get activated in a way that energy flows from your brain to that muscle in action. And trust me, the workout really improved. So this is just one example. It is just about activating your senses in a way that energy flows where you want it to flow. That is what flow is, and that is what is bought by singular focus. Not just that. Of course, when your energies are improved, you get more mental clarity. You are bound to make better decisions. If not the best, better at least.

One more thing that focus helps you to bring is the release of your happy hormone called as dopamine. Dopamine, my dear friend, is the worst enemy of cortisol. And cortisol here is the biggest inducer of stress in ourselves. Cortisol can disrupt your body hormones. Cortisol can lead to mental health. Cortisol induces more stress. Stress in turn produces more cortisol. The only way to get rid of it or at least decrease the production of levels of cortisol in our body is by good amount of introduction of dopamine. And focus is one good technique to achieve that. Not just that, you've often seen people saying that, hey. Let me focus. This is one activity that I am purely trying to work on. Could be their passion project, could be their work, could be anything.

So focus helps you to bring the maximum amount of creative breakthroughs. And for a matter of fact, that's true. Now people are like, okay. You're talking about flow. You're talking about how to bring in focus. How do I achieve focus? One way to achieve focus is maybe meditate. That's the most common one that you've heard. But for someone like me, I'll be like, oh, meditate. I cannot do that. Within two minutes, I'm gonna doze off. And I'm pretty sure a lot of you would be doing the same, that, oh, I cannot really meditate. And does that mean I cannot really focus? I don't have that in me? No. Your focus does not have to be slow. Meditation is just a technique to achieve focus. That's it. Easy peasy. Your focus can be smart enough too. Just time block. Just decide that, okay. In the next one hour, I'm gonna do this.

It can be an activity as simple as doing your office work. Okay. We leave work apart. It can be an activity as easy as watching the television, but you have to ensure that one art is dedicated to just watching the television. It's not that, okay, the TV is on and you're scrolling Instagram. No. That is not focus. Focus is refining your energy towards a particular direction or towards a particular ambition. Focus doesn't have to be aimless. It just is refined flow. It's refined energy. That's it. Now we do understand that, you know, we cannot change overnight. It's not like I decided today that tomorrow I'm gonna be a new person, and I am a new person. If you can do that, awesome.

But most of us cannot really do it. So have few techniques to achieve that focus in micro bits. Right? Every small step comes there to achieving the bigger picture. We did talk about the time blocking. That's definitely the most effective technique to achieve focus. I do it myself, and I do know that, you know, there's a range of difference in the two. The other thing that you can try is breathe. By breathe, I do not mean learn to meditate. By breathe, I mean, when you're switching from one task to another, give your brain at least, if not much, at least that thirty seconds of inactivity between tasks. Even if your brain is switching, right, the switch can be a smooth switch. It doesn't have to be like it can be with the flow.

So give your brain that thirty to forty seconds of inactivity when you're switching between tasks. Another thing that we talk about is keeping your creative window sacred. Now a lot of people have different energy cycles. Some are hyperactive at the time of sunrise. The others, they're more comfortable during the evenings or some are nocturnal. They have the highest amount of energies at the nighttime. It's all okay. Just keep your highest energy levels to the areas that you'd like to keep your focus on. It doesn't really mean that, okay. When I have the highest amount of energy, I'm going to do my office work. It could be something following, like, your passion project. So just try to keep the idea here is to keep your creative window sacred to that areas of focus. One thing is gonna tie back to another, and that's pretty much it. So I'll leave you here with just one invitation.

Try adopting these techniques for one day in a week. If you can achieve that, slowly increase to maybe two days, three days. If you could do it altogether for an entire week, awesome. You're already there. The only thing that you have to try is to bring your brain to focus, is to let your mind breathe so that your work can deepen and your nervous system can thank you. In a world which glorifies rebellion, your calmness can be your superpower. In a world that demands everything of you do everything. That's okay. We all gotta do. But doing one thing at a time with full presence, that is your superpower. Always remember, jack of all trades is never the master of any. Or as we say, jack of all trades, master of none. So just remember this one thing, control your time, alter your habits, and succeed just on your own terms.

Thank you very much.