Doing One Task at a Time to Love My Family Better
Have you mastered the skill of multitasking? I believed I had. At any point in the day, you could find me trying to do several tasks at one time. I filled every spare moment with some kind of work or content. I listened to podcasts while I cleaned the kitchen, picked up my phone to answer text messages simultaneously, all the while answering my children who would inevitably call out from the living room because somebody had no pants on or was eating stuffing from the wingback chair. During lunch, I’d start heating the pan with oil, run to prepare rooms for nap time, return to put sandwiches in the pan, then run back downstairs to switch laundry, and finally run back up the stairs to flip the sandwiches. During that time, I would also make phone calls or check social media apps. I couldn’t waste a single second.
Are you tired yet from simply reading that?
Most of us have probably already heard that multitasking isn’t possible. Though many of us think we’re multitasking by listening to a podcast while nursing a baby, cooking supper, and mentally planning the next grocery list, we’re actually just hopping rapidly from one task to another, or “task-switching” as researchers call it. Price explains in her book How to Break Up with Your Phone that this task-switching actually exhausts us, makes our memory poorer (because your immediate memory can only hold five to seven items at a time), and affects our ability to concentrate, problem solve, and discern irrelevant information from what’s important.¹ I was experiencing all of this.
In the midst of all my screen time and intense task-switching, I moved at the highest speed I possibly could, and condemned myself whenever I slowed down. In the morning, if I looked at the clock and realized I had taken an extra three minutes in the shower, stress mounted in me. If my workout got pushed back five minutes, I looked at the clock with angst. I rushed and hurried through tasks out of fear of losing those precious few minutes.
Again, this was an impossible burden and a sure way to burn-out. No wonder I felt exhausted, and it led to me making cuts in my regular times of rest and replenishment, such as daily exercise, mealtimes, and breaks. Not only that, it made me annoyed with my children when they slowed me down; if I had to stop several times to break up fights and soothe children who had bumped their heads while trying to clean the bedrooms, I grew impatient with them. I put my schedules of housework and meals above them, when the housework and meals should be to serve my family as a whole—not maintain my appearance to the world.
In our technology world, we’ve grown to believe that everything should move at the rate of high-speed, fiber-op internet. Not only that, we’re regularly comparing our workloads with that of our favorite Instagram mom: Look at all the bread she bakes while running a full-time business from home and still homeschooling her children; check out that mom with six kids who is still cooking supper and dessert every night for her family; consider that mother who writes novels every three months while also spending three hours outside each day with her kids. It never ends, and we are never good enough. In this game of comparisons, we don’t see the rest of that family’s life, and we forget that our circumstances are unique and different from theirs.
What truly drove this point home for me was reading Sarah Mackenzie’s wonderful little book Teaching from Rest. She likewise writes about the temptation of multitasking: “There just isn’t a way to steep yourself fully in this moment if you multitask your way through it.”
She goes on to look at the pitfalls of this task-switching from a relational viewpoint. In multitasking, we’re trying to be the most efficient mom possible with as little wasted time and as many tasks checked off our lists as possible. But she points out that relationships are the most unproductive thing we will ever commit to. “By definition, to be efficient is to achieve maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense. But relationships don’t flourish or grow that way. Relationships need time, spent lavishly … relationships just aren’t efficient.”²
On remedying this problem, Sarah Mackenzie writes,
“What if, instead of trying to make the most of our time, we worked harder at savoring it? What if we were more intentional and lavish with our time and more detached from our checklists? Getting caught up in plans for what is coming next or trying to squeeze everything possible into this moment right now is a surefire way to miss the gift of this moment, today, and it is a certain path to anxiety. Teaching from rest doesn’t mean we aren’t planning ahead (in fact, we will likely need to use written plans and checklists), and it definitely doesn’t mean we are lazy. It means that we are doing one thing at a time, and we do that thing with all our heart.”³
I realized that I had prioritized something else over my family. I had blamed my family and their neediness for my exhaustion, when in reality it was my own harsh and impossible standards of productivity that had caused it. I had lost my focus—my focus is to care for my family, not have the most pristine and orderly home or the most words written or the most books listened to in my earbuds.
After reading those words in Sarah Mackenzie’s book, I realized where my burn-out had come from: Not a needy family, but a mom trying to do too much. I decided to only do one task at a time: I grill sandwiches and do nothing else. I clean my kitchen without listening to anything. I play with my children without my phone nearby. I read when the little ones are busy or asleep and keep my devices in another room. I write without social media tabs open. I’m seeking to do one thing at a time with all of my heart. It’s not easy—it takes constant reminders from myself to simply sit by the stove with nothing to do while the oil heats up—but it’s made such a difference.
This change is a reminder to me and anyone around me that I am not omnipotent or omnipresent; I can’t meet every need, complete every task, and sustain a perfect home. Only God can. Instead, I can do my best to be a good steward with what resources (such as time and energy) he’s given me, and trust him with what’s left.
I often get stuck in the comparison track: I look at the other moms around me who seem to be doing all the things after I catch a glimpse of their lives through Instagram, and I start to worry that I’m not doing enough. Perhaps God will be disappointed in me. But God doesn’t compare our lives with each other.
Consider the parable Jesus told of the servants and the talents (Matt. 25:14–30): A master went away, and left different portions of his wealth with three servants. Servant A got five talents, Servant B got two, and Servant C got one. When the master returned, Servant A had used his five talents to get back five more talents (ten in total). The master was pleased. Servant B had used his talents to get back two more talents (four in total). The master was pleased again.
The master didn’t compare Servants A and B. He compared them against what he had entrusted to them individually. He wasn’t less pleased with Servant B for not creating more with lesser talents. The master was, however, displeased with Servant C, who had simply hid his single talent and had done nothing with it.
To each of us, God has entrusted a unique set of resources: Children, financial ability, energy, health, skills, and the like. To each of us, however, he gives the same command: Love God and love one another—that is the fulfillment of the law (Matt. 22:36–40). The nitty-gritty particulars of how we obey that law may look different. For one family, it might be spending more time outside hiking in the woods than fretting over every ledge being dusted and baked granola. For another, it might look like snacks that look like animals and homemade bread steaming on the counter. What matters is whether we are faithful with what God has given us, putting our whole selves into the moments we have, and trusting God with what’s left before we stretch ourselves too thin.
I’m trying to slow down with my children. Rather than hurrying them to put their socks on and then doing it myself out of frustration, I’m learning to wait and encourage them to try to do it themselves. Instead of getting annoyed with how long they are taking to eat a meal, I use the spare time to read a book or poem to them. This way of life means I’m technically less productive, but I’m hoping it will mean I’m being productive in another, better kind of way.
Catherine Price, How to Break Up With Your Phone (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2018), 48–49.
Sarah Mackenzie, Teaching From Rest (Camp Hill, PA: Classical Academic Press, 2015), 50–51.
Mackenzie, 51.
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