In a groundbreaking discovery that will shock no one who has ever tried to read a book while scrolling TikTok, writer David Epstein has found that focusing on one thing at a time is actually quite nice. The revelation came after a head injury forced him to get stitches and obey doctors’ orders to move slowly for a few days. Expecting annoyance, Epstein instead found himself feeling happy - and, more importantly, not multitasking like a caffeinated squirrel.
“It wasn’t so much what I was doing as what I wasn’t doing,” Epstein explains in a recent essay. He describes his post-stitch life as “monotasking” - concentrating on one activity at a time, whether reading, working on his computer, or brushing his teeth. The pain near his stitches served as an organic (and frankly, extreme) “multitasking monitor,” zapping him anytime he tried to juggle too many tasks. Epstein argues that creative work requires limits, and only within those limits can we find the space to think freely. But for the rest of us without conveniently painful head wounds, the Atlantic offers a few curated suggestions: a 2024 piece on elite college students who can’t read books (because why start now?), and a 2023 list of seven books designed to pry your phone from your cold, distracted hands.
As a bonus, reader Norma J. shared a photo of a “Chicken in the Woods” fungus found in her Montague, Massachusetts backyard - because even nature knows how to focus on one thing: being a weird mushroom.