Monotasking

The struggle to pay attention, plus my weekly shareables: The tao of Taylor Swift, the backstory on the MCU, and the strange attraction of DogTV

Even our damn shampoo is getting in on the act

Quick reminder for folks in the Charlotte area: I’m joining my bud Joe Posnanski at his book event Wednesday night at Park Road Books. Come buy his New York Times bestseller WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL and bring your questions about baseball—or, to be honest, pretty much anything else. We love to talk!

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As I watched the baseball playoffs this week (RIP my beloved Braves), one commercial kept popping up. It’s an Allstate ad about the Podcast Guy—the guy who, no matter the topic, has been listening to a podcast about that.

The best part is at the end, when he’s at a conference table for some sort of staff meeting, and the woman leading the meeting looks at him and says: “Are … you listening to a podcast?” (There’s an earbud lodged in his ear.) He replies: “Yeah, it’s about multitasking.”

The commercial is really funny but also hits close to home, because I have been the Podcast Guy from time to time, and even worse, I most definitely have been the Multitasking Guy.

The other night, while watching one of those baseball games, I realized that my brain was toggling from the game on the TV to the email on my phone to the book I was trying to read at the same time. I read the same page of the book three or four times before it finally stuck in my head. You’ve probably seen all the studies that show multitasking isn’t real—it’s just switching between tasks in a way our brains can’t really handle. But we’ve made multitasking into something that’s not just necessary but somehow feels heroic. Look at the mighty worker doing three things at once! (Poorly.)

There are a few people whose lives require multitasking. If you’re a working mom trying to get breakfast made and three kids dressed for school, it’s basically impossible to do just one thing at a time. Multitask the shit out of that. But most of us have no excuse beyond our restless brains, which have become conditioned to continually jump-cut from one stimulus to another. Not only is it a terrible way to get things done, it’s a terrible way to make any of it stay in your head. So the next time you do the same task it’s like starting from scratch.

The only way I really accomplish anything is when I can keep my brain still enough to do some serious monotasking. One thing at a time. Write for an hour. Read a book with the phone in the other room. Just sit there and breathe until the only thing you sense is the breathing. Those are always the best and most productive times of my day. I have tried to write this little essay here at the dining room table without doing anything else this morning. The cat wandered in at some point asking for a belly rub, so I gave him one. But other than that it was a pretty clean session. Quicker than I usually write. Because I had the good sense, for once, to leave everything else alone.

10 things I wanted to share this week:

1. This week’s SOUTHBOUND was a replay of my 2021 conversation with poet Ada Limón, who since our talk has become the U.S. poet laureate and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” I’m not saying that an appearance on my podcast will launch your career into the heavens. I’m just presenting evidence.

2. My weekly for WFAE was about the North Carolinians involved in the Speaker of the House saga.

3. Alisha, my favorite niece (don’t tell the others) sent me this link to a BookTok guy who reads the first lines of books and included THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM in one of his TikToks. Thank you Schizophrenicreads!

4. Happy pub week to my friend Gavin Edwards, who co-wrote MCU: THE REIGN OF MARVEL STUDIOS, which explains how the Marvel Cinematic Universe came to be—and where it’s going. A perfect gift for the Marvel fan in your life.

5. DOG NEWS: From now until DOGLAND comes out (April 2024!), I’m devoting this slot to dog stories. This week: The minds behind DogTV, the channel made for dogs. (And also possibly stoners.) (NYT)

6. My friends at the brilliant show TRUESOUTH have launched another season with a fantastic episode about Hot Springs, Arkansas. If you enjoy that—and you will—maybe go back in the archives and find the episode about me and my hometown. It’s one of the favorite things I’ve ever done. (ESPN; earlier episodes available on Hulu)

7. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, the best celebrity profiler on earth, gets to the core of what Taylor Swift means—and, along the way, explains why there might not be many more great celebrity profiles. (NYT)

8. We breezed through all 10 episodes of THE NIGHT AGENT—where a young FBI agent gets caught up in (you won’t believe this) a conspiracy involving (you really won’t believe this) a mole inside the White House. Not brilliant but still a lot of fun. (Netflix)

9. I’m not sure I’ll have the guts to watch THE IRON CLAW, based on the horribly tragic true story of the Von Erich wrestling family. But the trailer looks like the film is well-done, and Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White are absolutely jacked. Be on the lookout for stories about steroids in Hollywood.
   

10. One of my favorite small pleasures in life is hearing a great but unfamiliar song in a bar or coffeeshop, then Shazam-ing it so I can play it again on the way home. That’s how I ran across “Breakdown” by Gary Clark Jr.—I know a lot of his stuff but had never heard this one. The guitar line reminds me of the Marshall Crenshaw songs I still love so much.

    
    Have a great week, everybody.