I was studying for April exams in my final year of university when I got a powerful craving for a Cadbury Easter Crème Egg. You know the one. Thick chocolate shell with a much too sugary, sweet filling inside. You can get a cavity just looking at the wrapper.
But I had to have one. The urge became almost primal and while I would normally loathe to give up any study time, there was no point in even trying when the only concern that night was finding and devouring a crème egg.
It shouldn't have been too hard. I lived in a city that was filled with supermarkets, grocery stores and every type of convenience mart known to the consumer world. So I got in the car and headed out on my quest. The search for Bigfoot had greater success.
I started with the bigger stores. Surely there would be leftover Easter inventory they'd be happy to unload…maybe even at discounted prices! But there were none in the grocery stores. Nothing in the department stores. Had it really been that long since Easter?
My next option was to check out the larger convenience stores, one by one. Nothing. I set my sights on the handful of corner stores that existed at that time. Where were all the yellow, red and blue egg-shaped wrappers?
I'm not sure how much time I spent driving around the city that night and I have no idea how that craving originated. Cadbury Easter Crème Eggs are a fine treat; they just don't rank among my favorites. But for some reason that night I was absolutely fixated.
Singlemindedness is the relentless pursuit of a goal. A decision to focus on one thing—and one thing alone—to the exclusion of everything else. It is often deemed necessary in leadership, corporate strategy, and even individual goal setting but it's not really the way our day-to-day lives work.
There are all kinds of things vying for our attention at any given moment which can make it hard to focus on any single thing. We sometimes think we can juggle a multitude of activities and do it with success but the reality is that while we can have several things on the go at the same time, we can actually do only one thing at a time.
I know, I know…we can brainstorm ideas, finish a report, check our phones, send texts to committee members, create lists, and plan an event all at the same time, right? While we can certainly feel as if we are doing all these things simultaneously, what we're actually doing is shifting from task to task to task in such rapid succession our brains are having to choose which information to focus on.
We want to believe the transitions back and forth are seamless, yet the reality is there is a lag time with this rapid shifting that is interrupting and disrupting the cognitive process of attention. This has a cost. Trying to do multiple things at the same time is resulting in a greater number of mistakes coupled by slower completion time than if we had done things methodically. One. After. Another.
Cutting out distractions is a start. No, we aren't doing our best when we are allowing all of our activities to be interrupted by ringtones and alerts. No, we aren't giving proper attention to our families and friends when we have one eye on them and one eye on a screen. Often times the distractions are more fun, more entertaining and maybe even easier to deal with than what's in front of us, but digging in and taking care of things one at a time is truly the most efficient way to approach anything.
As for my search for an egg that April night? I honestly don't remember. Crazy, right? I can remember driving around. I can recall several of the places I checked, yet I believe I may have returned home empty-handed. But perhaps the pursuit turned out okay in the end. I sometimes found it hard taking study breaks at the best of times, let alone during exam time, and that wasn't a healthy way to approach finals. Maybe the search for the egg gave me the breather I needed.
Singlemindedness can make us inflexible. Thinking we can multitask makes us inefficient. The balance between the two is the sweet spot; perhaps not as sweet as the filling of an Easter Crème Egg, but sweet nonetheless. It's as simple as taking time to enjoy the quest as much as savoring the outcome. That's my outlook.
