We all deserve the present of presence, especially to ourselves.

We live in a world of endless distractions, multi-tasking and fractured interests. We see it and live it all of the time. A student daydreams in class, checks their email or makes notes to themselves on a topic unrelated to the material being presented. We check our text messages in the middle of a conversation, type out an email while we are talking on our cell or fail to look up from our laptops  when someone asks us a question. At home we never looked up from our newspaper or magazine when a family member asked us about something, we are thinking about dinner while we are watching a movie and while we were having dinner we were thinking about the next movie. By the pool we were thinking about tomorrow’s to do list. Oh well, so little time, so much to do.

There might be something of substance in the recent comments we have seen by some suggesting that mutli-tasking is a myth. I mean we can certainly do two things at once, and at times some of us may catch ourselves doing three or four. The question is, are we accomplishing 100% of each of those tasks or simply devoting only 1/3 or 1/4 of our energy and attention to each of them. I believe it is probably the latter. Which causes me to wonder how much greater would the result have been if we had focused 100% on the singular task at hand and then moved on to the next one consecutively? All of this got me wondering about the definition of presence:

pres·ence  (przns)n.

Did I read that right? If you want to have a bearing and command respectful attention you need to be present? If you want the qualities of self assurance and effectiveness you need to be present? Then I think of the number of times I have been driving, mind elsewhere, and drove by the street I was looking for or all of a sudden completely unable to remember the last mile driven…and I wonder how often we do this and how much we must be missing.

We should all take time to give ourselves the present of presence. Maybe we would all benefit if today we focused more, mutli-tasked less and practiced being present.