Chapter 5: Doing One Thing at a Time

Dinner, Homework and a Phone Call

Rania is thirty-eight. It is six o'clock in the evening, and she is cooking dinner for her family. Onions are frying in a pan. Rice is boiling on the next ring. Her son is at the kitchen table asking for help with his mathematics homework, and she is leaning over his shoulder between stirs. Her phone is wedged between her ear and her shoulder, because her mother has called to talk about a cousin's wedding. The radio is playing the news.

Rania is good at this. Over the years, she has become an expert at doing many things at once, or so she believes. She explains a fraction to her son, says "Yes, of course" to her mother, stirs the onions, turns down the rice and half listens to a news report about the weather. Then several things happen together. The onions burn. Her son gets the wrong answer because she explained the problem too quickly. Her mother asks, "Are you listening to me?" in a hurt voice. And Rania realizes she has no idea what the weather will be tomorrow.

Later, after dinner, Rania sits down, exhausted. She has been busy for every second of the evening, and yet she feels she did nothing well. The meal was edible but rushed, her son is still confused, her mother is a little offended and her own mind feels like a room after a party, full of scattered things.

Most of us know evenings like Rania's. Modern life often seems to demand that we do many things at once, and we are often proud of our ability to handle many tasks together. But Zen has a different and very old teaching about this, told through the story of a cook. Its message is simple, though not easy: do one thing at a time, and do it completely.

The Myth of Doing Everything at Once

Many people describe themselves as good at multitasking, doing several tasks at the same time. But research on attention suggests that, for tasks that need real thought, what we call multitasking is usually something else. We are not doing several things at once. We are switching rapidly between them, back and forth, often many times a minute.

Each switch has a cost. Studies of task switching have found again and again that when people switch from one task to another, they tend to become slower and make more mistakes than when they stay with one task. The mind needs a moment to set aside the rules and details of one task and pick up those of another. When we switch constantly, these small costs add up. We feel busy and productive, but we often accomplish less, and less well, than if we had done each task in turn.

There are exceptions. We can often combine a very familiar physical task with a task that needs thought, such as walking while talking or folding laundry while listening to music. But when two tasks both need our real attention, such as explaining mathematics and listening to a mother's worries, the mind cannot fully do both. One of them, or both, will suffer.

Switching also leaves something behind. When we move from one task to another before the first is finished, part of our mind often stays with the unfinished task, quietly turning it over. Some researchers call this leftover attention. It means that even when we have moved on, we are not fully in the new task, because a piece of us is still in the old one. Over a day of constant switching, these leftover pieces pile up, which may be one reason why a scattered day can feel so tiring even when no single task was hard.

There is another cost, which is harder to measure but easy to feel. When we are always switching, we are never fully anywhere. We are never completely in the conversation, never completely in the cooking, never completely with the child. Life becomes a series of half-experiences. This is the feeling Rania had at the end of her evening: busy every second, yet somehow absent from all of it.

The Old Cook in the Sun

In 1223, the young Japanese monk Dōgen, whom we have met in earlier chapters, travelled to China to study Zen. Many years later, back in Japan, he wrote a text called Tenzokyōkun, "Instructions for the Cook". It explains how the head cook of a monastery, the tenzo, should do his work. In this text, Dōgen tells two stories about cooks he met in China. They are among the most loved stories in all of Zen literature, and here is the first, in my own retelling.

One summer day, at a large monastery, Dōgen was walking past the main hall after the midday meal. The sun was blazing, and the stones of the path were so hot that they burned underfoot. There, in the full heat, he saw the monastery's old cook. The old man was spreading out food on the ground to dry in the sun, bending over with a bamboo stick, without a hat to protect his head. Sweat was pouring down his face. He was clearly suffering, but he kept working steadily.

Dōgen went up to him and asked how old he was. The cook said he was sixty-eight. Dōgen, surprised, asked why he did not let one of the younger helpers do this hard work. The old cook replied, in substance, "Other people are not me." Dōgen then asked why, if he insisted on doing it himself, he did it in the worst heat of the day, instead of waiting until it was cooler. The cook replied, "If not now, then when?"

Dōgen writes that he had nothing more to say. He walked on, and as he walked, he understood something about the importance of the cook's work that he had not understood before. The story is very short. But in two simple answers, the old cook gave him a lesson that people have carried for eight centuries.

"Other People Are Not Me"

What did the cook mean by "Other people are not me"? One way to understand it is this. This task, at this moment, is his. If someone else did it, it would be someone else's practice, someone else's life, not his. The cook was not refusing help out of pride or stubbornness. He was recognizing that his own life is made of the moments he actually lives, and the work he actually does. To hand over his work would be, in a sense, to hand over a piece of his own life.

This does not mean that we should never ask for help or share tasks. In a family, a workplace or a community, sharing work is often wise and kind. But the cook's words point to something deeper: whatever task is in front of us, whether chosen or given, is the place where our life is happening right now. We can treat it as an annoying interruption to our "real" life, which is always somewhere else. Or we can treat it as our real life, here and now.

When Rania stirs the onions while thinking about the wedding, the onions are not really her life at that moment. Neither is the wedding, which is in the future. Her mind is split between them. The cook's answer invites her to choose. If she is cooking, let her cook. If she is talking with her mother, let her talk with her mother. Each task, while she is doing it, can be hers completely.

There is also a gentle dignity in the cook's words. Many people feel that some tasks are beneath them, or are not worth their full attention: cooking, cleaning, filling in forms, answering routine messages. The cook, an old and respected monk, was doing a hot, simple, physical task with complete commitment. In Zen, there is no task too small to be done with the whole heart.

Another way to hear "Other people are not me" is as a reminder that nobody else can be present in your place. Someone else can wash your dishes, answer your emails or even cook your dinner. But nobody else can taste your food, hear your child's voice or feel the evening air on your face for you. Those experiences are yours alone, and they only happen if you are there for them. The old cook, by doing his own work with his own hands, was also living his own life with his own attention.

"If Not Now, Then When?"

The cook's second answer, "If not now, then when?", is just as rich. On the surface, it is practical: the food needed to dry, and the sun was strongest now. Waiting for a cooler hour would have meant a worse result.

But many readers have heard something more in these words. They point to the simple fact that the only time we ever actually have is now. Plans for later, and memories of before, are thoughts that happen now. When we postpone presence, telling ourselves that we will be calm and attentive when the busy period is over, when the children are older, when we retire, we may find that the busy period never ends. The cook did not wait for a better moment to give himself fully to his work. He gave himself fully to the moment he had.

This connects to everything we have explored so far. The breath happens only now. Sitting happens only now. Thoughts carry us to the past and the future, but returning brings us back to now. The cook in the sun was living the same practice in the middle of a working day. He was not meditating in a hall. He was spreading food to dry. But his attention was completely in the present.

"If not now, then when?" can be a useful question to carry. When you notice yourself thinking, "I will really pay attention to my family when this project is finished," or "I will enjoy my life when I have more time," the cook's question can bring you back. Not someday. Now, in this ordinary moment, with this ordinary task.

There is a practical side to this question too. Many people postpone not only presence, but also the small tasks that would make life easier: the letter that needs answering, the drawer that needs sorting, the call that needs making. These postponed tasks sit in the back of the mind and take up space, like stones in a bag that we carry everywhere. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for a busy mind is simply to do the small task now, completely, and let it go.

The Cook on the Ship

Dōgen tells a second story in the same text, from even earlier in his journey. When his ship first arrived at the coast of China, it stayed in the harbour for some time. One day, an old monk came on board to buy mushrooms from the Japanese traders. He was the cook of a monastery some distance away, and he had walked a long way to buy ingredients for a special meal.

Dōgen, eager to talk with a Chinese monk, invited him to stay, to share some tea and to spend the night on the ship. The old cook politely refused. He had to return to the monastery, he said, because he needed to prepare the meal. Dōgen asked whether others could not cook in his place, and why an old monk would spend his time on cooking rather than on meditation and the study of the teachings. In Dōgen's account, the old cook laughed and told him that he did not yet understand what practice really was.

Dōgen was puzzled and a little embarrassed. It was only later, after much study and experience, that he understood what the old cook had meant. For the cook, cooking was not a distraction from practice. It was practice. Cutting vegetables, washing rice and tending the fire, done with full attention and care, were just as much the way of Zen as sitting in meditation.

In the rest of Instructions for the Cook, Dōgen describes this attitude in detail. He asks the cook to handle the food, the pots and the water with great care, never wasting anything, and to prepare each meal as if it were the most important thing in the world, regardless of whether the ingredients are fine or simple. He writes that the cook's mind should be joyful, caring and generous, a mind that delights in the work, cares for others as a parent cares for a child and is not narrow or petty. This is a description of doing one thing at a time, done not grimly, but warmly.

Three Lives, One Thing at a Time

Dawit is forty-four and works as an accountant. His working day used to be a constant stream of interruptions: emails arriving every few minutes, messages, phone calls and colleagues stopping by his desk. He was always busy but rarely finished anything without errors. Inspired by a talk about attention, he tries a new way of working. He checks his email only at certain times of the day, four times in all. In between, he closes his email programme and works on one task at a time, with his phone face down. When a colleague comes by, he turns away from the screen and gives them his full attention, then returns to his task. Within a few weeks, he finds that he finishes more work, makes fewer mistakes and goes home less tired.

Marisol is sixty-seven and makes quilts, a craft she learned from her grandmother. In recent years, she has started listening to programmes on her phone while she sews, and she has noticed that her stitches are less even and that she enjoys the work less. One day, she turns the phone off and sews in silence. At first, the silence feels strange. Then she begins to notice things she had stopped noticing: the colours of the fabrics, the rhythm of the needle, the soft sound of thread being pulled through cloth. She feels as if she has rediscovered her craft. She still listens to programmes sometimes, but she keeps certain parts of each quilt, the finest work, for silent sewing.

Felix is fifteen and does his homework with three or four other things going on: a video playing, a group chat, a game paused in another window. His homework takes hours, and his marks are lower than he would like. His older sister challenges him to an experiment: for one week, do each piece of homework with nothing else open, for twenty-five minutes at a time, followed by a five-minute break when he can do whatever he likes. Felix is sure it will make no difference. By the end of the week, he admits that he finished his homework in half the time and had more free evening left over. He does not keep the rule perfectly, but he keeps it for subjects he finds difficult.

Rania, from the beginning of this chapter, makes a few small changes. When her mother calls during dinner preparation, she asks if she can call back after dinner, when she can give her full attention. She helps her son with his homework after the cooking is done, sitting beside him at the table. While she cooks, she turns off the radio. She notices that the evenings feel less chaotic, the food is better and her mother is happier with a later, unhurried call than with a distracted one during the cooking.

In each case, the change was not to do less in total, but to do one thing at a time. Dawit, Marisol, Felix and Rania each found that giving one task their full attention, and then the next, was both more effective and more satisfying than trying to do everything at once.

Practical Steps

First, notice your switching. For one morning or one afternoon, pay attention to how often you switch from one task to another. You may be surprised. Simply noticing is the first step.

Second, choose one task and stay with it. Pick a task that needs your attention and decide to do only that for a set time, perhaps twenty or thirty minutes. Close other windows, put your phone away and give the task your whole attention. When your mind wanders to other tasks, return.

Third, give people your full attention. When someone speaks to you, stop what you are doing, turn toward them and listen. If you cannot do this at that moment, say so kindly and arrange a time when you can.

Fourth, batch the small things. Instead of answering messages as they arrive, set aside a few regular times in the day to deal with them all together. This reduces the constant switching that breaks up your attention.

Fifth, treat small tasks as worthy. Choose one simple, everyday task, such as washing vegetables, folding clothes or writing a short note, and do it with the care of the old cook. Notice what happens when you stop treating it as an interruption.

Sixth, ask "If not now, then when?" When you find yourself postponing presence, telling yourself you will pay attention later, let the cook's question bring you back to now.

A Short Practice: One Task, Fully

This practice takes as long as one ordinary task takes, perhaps five to fifteen minutes. It is a way of bringing the spirit of zazen into everyday work.

Choose a simple task that you would normally do while thinking about other things. Washing a few dishes, peeling potatoes, sweeping a floor, watering plants or making a cup of tea are all good choices. Before you begin, take three breaths, as in the first chapter. Remind yourself: for the next few minutes, this task is my whole life.

Now begin. Do the task slowly enough that you can notice what you are doing, but not so slowly that it feels strange. Notice the sensations: the warmth of the water, the weight of the potato, the sound of the broom, the smell of the soil. Notice the movements of your hands. Notice the small decisions you make, such as where to put a plate or how much water to pour.

When your mind wanders, as it will, to plans, worries or memories, notice it and return to the task. You might silently say, "Washing," or "Sweeping," to bring yourself back. There is no need to scold yourself. The task will always be there, waiting for your return.

When you finish, pause for a moment and look at what you have done: the clean dishes, the peeled potatoes, the swept floor. Notice how you feel. Then move on to the next thing, and see whether you can bring a little of the same attention to it.

Try this practice once a day for a week, with a different task each time or the same one. Many people find that certain daily tasks become quiet, steady pauses in their day, and that they begin to look forward to them, in the way that the old cook seemed to find his meaning in spreading food to dry.

Questions People Often Ask

"My job requires me to handle many things at once. Is this teaching unrealistic for me?" Many jobs do involve dealing with many demands in a short time, such as caring for several patients, serving many customers or responding to emergencies. Even in such jobs, the principle can help. You can give full attention to each person or task while you are with it, even if that time is short, and then move fully to the next. A nurse who gives one patient two minutes of complete attention, then moves to the next patient with complete attention, is practising one thing at a time, even in a very busy setting.

"Is it selfish to ask people to wait so that I can finish what I am doing?" Not necessarily. Often, asking someone to wait a few minutes so that you can give them your full attention is kinder than half listening while you do something else. The key is to ask kindly and to keep your promise. "Let me finish this sentence, and then I am all yours" can be a gift to both of you.

"What about tasks that I really do not like?" The old cook was doing hot, hard, unpleasant work. He did not pretend to enjoy the heat. But he gave himself to the task fully, and in doing so, he found a kind of meaning and dignity in it. You may not come to love every task you dislike. But many people find that when they stop resisting a task in their minds, and simply do it with attention, it becomes less unpleasant and often finishes more quickly.

"Can I listen to music or a programme while I do simple tasks?" Of course. Zen is not a set of rules forbidding enjoyment. Listening to music while cleaning or a programme while cooking can be a pleasure. The practice in this chapter simply invites you to try, sometimes, doing a task on its own, to discover what it is like. Many people find that both ways have their place: some tasks done with company, others done in silence, with full attention.

Chapter Summary

What we call multitasking is usually rapid switching between tasks, and research on attention has found that switching has costs in time and mistakes. It also leaves us never fully present anywhere, which can make busy days feel empty.

In Instructions for the Cook, Dōgen tells of an old cook drying food in the summer heat who answered his questions with "Other people are not me" and "If not now, then when?", and of another cook who taught him that cooking itself is practice. These stories invite us to treat each task, however ordinary, as our real life, and to give it our full attention now, not later.

Noticing your switching, staying with one task, giving people your full attention, grouping small tasks together, treating ordinary work as worthy and asking "If not now, then when?" all help. In the next chapter, we look more closely at one of the most ordinary tasks of all, washing up, and at a short Zen story about a bowl.