e fall into the trap of division when we try to attend to two things at once. We participate in a conversation with one ear while at the same time trying to solve a financial problem that’s been preying on our mind. Just as our financial musings draw close to a conclusion, the conversation turns to us—and the delicate structure of our thought is scattered to oblivion. When we return to the problem, we have to reconstruct the previously established results. At the same time, our contribution to the conversation is very boring.

The idea of doing two things at once needs some clarification. In a sense, we’re always doing many things at the same time without suffering any ill effects. We continue to breathe while we’re eating; we don’t have to stop walking to look at the scenery. In these cases, however, at least one of the two activities doesn’t require conscious attention. When we walk, we don’t have to be continuously deciding to lift one leg and then the other. The proper sequence of events runs its course automatically. So long as they’re automatic, we can perform any number of simultaneous acts. There seems to be no limit to our ability to turn skilled performances into automatized routines. An experienced automobile driver can get herself home in one piece, evidently stopping at every red light, while all the time absorbed in the contemplation of her business affairs. The sight of her own house suddenly looming before her sometimes takes her completely by surprise. And a trained pianist can play a creditable tune while chatting with friends.

But it’s a basic law of the mind that we can’t consciously attend to two things at once. Strictly speaking, attention is indivisible. When we try to be conscious of two things, it may appear that we’re allotting a portion of our attention to each. But closer introspection reveals either (1) that the whole of consciousness is being made to shift back and forth between the two activities, or (2) that one of the activities is relegated to the unconscious, automatic mode of operation. Let’s look at each of these two possibilities in turn.

If the sequence of thoughts relating to activity A is represented by A₁, A₂, A₃, and A₄, and the thoughts relating to activity B are B1, B₂, B₃, and B₄, the attempt to think them both at the same time results in a mixed stream of ideas that looks like this:

A₁, A₂, B₁, A₃, B₂, B₃, A₄, B₄

These oscillations from one topic to the other may, however, be so rapid that we have the illusion of simultaneity. One moment we’re listening to the conversation, the next moment we revert to a private problem, and the moment after that we’re listening again. Most of the oscillations pass unnoticed, and in retrospect it seems to us that we’ve been listening and thinking at the same time.

Now the commonest motive for trying to do two things at once is a desire to expedite our work. By dividing attention, we hope to complete two tasks in the time it would ordinarily take to complete just one. But since we have to think our conscious thoughts one at a time, this procedure can never save us any steps. There are four As and four Bs to work our way through, regardless of the order they’re taken in. On the other hand, when we oscillate away from thought stream A, we can’t expect to pick it up again exactly where we left off. We have to pick up the threads of the abandoned project. The interpolated activity B having distracted us, we must at least remind ourselves of the last conclusions before we are able to proceed. Often we need to repeat entire sequences of thought whose conclusion had already been arrived at. When attention is divided, we are returned again and again to the same starting point, from which place we must again and again rethink the same ideas. A more accurate portrayal of divided thought would be:

A₁, A₂, B₁, A₂, A₃, B₁, B₂, B₃, A₂, A₃, A₄, B₃, B₄

Clearly it would be less arduous to do it like this:

A₁, A₂, A₃, A₄, B₁, B₂, B₃, B₄

Or like this:

B₁, B₂, B₃, B₄, A₁, A₂, A₃, A₄

This is why division is a trap.

Alternatively, the attempt to do two things at once may cause us to proceed with one of them at the unconscious level. We invest our private problem with continuous attention and fall into a pattern of automatic responding to someone we are conversing with: we smile and nod our head at everything he tells us. So long as the second task is thoroughly familiar and predictable, we will come to no harm. Some conversational partners never require more of us than an occasional token of approval. But if the course of events takes an unexpected turn, we may find ourselves in serious difficulties. We drive home with our mental gear in automatic, and the car in front of us screeches to a sudden halt. The bland spouter of conventionalities accuses us of wishing him dead, and we smile and nod our head.

Nevertheless, we must automatize some of our activities or else we could never do more than breathe. Unconsciousness per se is not an error. The trap is to try to do two things at once when we know that both of them require conscious attention. For then we can avoid the inefficiency of a mixed stream of thought only by the even less satisfactory route of letting our work on one of the tasks fall below the level of consciousness.

The fall from consciousness due to division is especially unfortunate when one of our activities is taken up for the sake of pleasure. In this case, we aren’t so concerned with getting to the end as efficiently as possible. We don’t mind having to take longer than necessary to eat a delicious dinner. But pleasure can’t be relished without consciousness. If we try to think about our work while we’re eating, we won’t notice the taste of our food. Even if we manage to sustain a mixed stream, alternately paying attention to work and to pleasure, our pleasure will be reduced. And we won’t do our best work.

Division is usually a secondary complication arising out of a previous case of anticipation or resistance, as pneumonia may develop from a cold. We enter into the divided state by taking on a second project before finishing or setting aside something already begun. We’re busy with our algebra homework, but our thoughts begin to drift toward the romantic encounter we have planned for later in the evening. Now either the homework is more important to us right now, or romance is more important. We may decide this issue any way we wish. If getting the homework done now takes precedence over expediting our love life, we’re guilty of anticipation. And if romance is an immediate imperative, we’re guilty of resistance for not flinging aside our books and flying to our lover.

Now and then we may be unable to decide which of two activities is the more pressing. In that case, we should select one of them arbitrarily. For either order is preferable to a mixed stream of both at the same time. Forget about finances and enjoy the conversation. Or kick out the guests and return to the accounts. It doesn’t matter which option you choose. Just don’t get stuck in the middle.

In a previous chapter we saw that mental traps cause the amount of unfinished business in our life to be always on the increase. The world is always presenting us with new problems, but we’re never quite finished with the old. We persist at tasks that have lost their meaning, amplify molehills into literally infinite mountains, revert to issues that are over and done with, and so on. As a result, there’s always something to take our attention away from the task at hand. Every time we sit down to read a book, we’re attacked by hordes of extraneous ideas relating to other times and other places. There are bills to be paid, children’s teeth to be straightened, raises to be asked for, letters to write, ancient injuries to avenge, retirement plans to finalize … How can we simply sit and read when there’s so much else happening at the same time?

We may live for years—even for a lifetime— in such a state of chronic division, always trying to hold all our unresolved problems in consciousness simultaneously instead of setting the burden down and picking up one item at a time. The penalty for chronic division is severe. Our skills and aptitudes are curtailed as surely as if we suffered brain damage—and we cease to experience pleasure.

A folk remedy for the ills of division is the habit of saving the best for last. As children, we ate the less favored sandwich crusts first, so that we might savor the soft middle portion without interruption. Now we open our mail in reverse order of interest—first the bills and advertising circulars, then the business letters, finally the personal correspondence. We put all our free hours at the end of the day, after all the chores are done, instead of taking a long break in the middle. Perhaps we design our whole life along this plan, deferring travels and adventures, the profound study of the saxophone, the cultivation of a garden—whatever truly attracts us—until after we’ve made ourselves financially secure.

The motive for this policy is very clear. If we live the best parts of life before the worst, our pleasure in them will be diminished by worries about what comes next. Better to get the sandwich crusts out of the way and not have them hanging over our head like a cloud! This is perfectly sound advice as far as it goes. If our pleasure in the best will be diminished by intrusions from the worst-to-come, it’s better to get the worst over with first. But to permit such intrusions is already to fall into the trap of division. The situation is reminiscent of New Year’s resolutions, discussed earlier. These are not themselves traps, but their usefulness is contingent on our having fallen into traps. Similarly, saving the best for last is not itself a trap. So long as we divide, we must defer our pleasures in order to enjoy them fully. But it’s better not to divide in the first place. When we cease to divide, we no longer have a reason to save the best for last. We can take our pleasures any time we like.

Note that the technique of saving the best for last is ineffective in cases of chronic division. The chronic divider always has something preying on his mind that has to be settled before he can enjoy himself. The house is never perfectly clean, the future never totally secure. The attempt to get everything settled before enjoying the best of life results in the perpetual postponement of pleasure. And that surely is a trap. It’s unwise to save the middle portion of the sandwich for the end when the crusts are infinitely long.

Another attempt to recapture the pleasure lost by division is to cancel all competing activities. We decide that we definitely will not make a difficult telephone call this evening, so that our enjoyment of dinner will be undiminished by intrusive thoughts. In this way we hope to lay the ghost to rest.

But this exorcism lands us immediately in the trap of negative anticipation: deciding prematurely not to do something. By a commitment not to make the telephone call, we purchase peace of mind at the cost of leaving an important chore undone. Peace of mind, however, may be had for free if only we cease to divide. We would enjoy our dinner at least as much if we simply put the issue of the telephone call entirely out of mind. There’s no need to make a decision yet. If we approach the evening openly, with neither positive nor negative agendas, a moment may come when making the telephone call doesn’t seem so odious. And then it will get done without our having had to think about it beforehand. Of course there can be no guarantees—the phone call may not get made. But nothing is to be gained by excluding the possibility of an easy solution right from the start.

Saving the best for last and negative anticipation are no more than symptomatic treatments for the division disease. Ultimately the only remedy that will restore our efficiency and our capacity for pleasure is to stop dividing. The technique for achieving this cure is constant practice in doing one thing at a time. Every single affair of the day is a suitable occasion for this important exercise. When we eat, we can practice just eating. When we wash the dishes, we can practice just washing. When we balance the checkbook, we can practice just doing arithmetic. Even the most insignificant acts—walking to the store, buying a newspaper—or the most odious—cleaning the toilet— have at least this element of value, if only we choose to harvest it: they’re opportunities to practice single-mindedness.

The greater the penalty for division, the easier we find it to keep our attention on a single task. Most of us would have no difficulty keeping our undivided attention on driving down a narrow, winding mountain road on a stormy night. If life doesn’t throw enough of these challenging circumstances our way, we would benefit by creating them intentionally. There’s no more excellent tonic for division than to position ourselves halfway up a perpendicular cliff.

Once we’ve mastered the elementary exercises of remaining undivided during mountain climbing, tightrope walking, and hand-to-hand combat, we may graduate to the more demanding practices that arise in everyday life, such as eating and washing dishes. A still more advanced practice is to select an activity that is at once dull, useless, and thoroughly familiar, and to attend to it fully for a set period of time. Many of the practices that fall under the loose heading of meditation have exactly this purpose in mind. In some traditional approaches to mental development, students spend twenty minutes a day counting their breaths from one to ten over and over again. Mastery comes when they’re not distracted from the count during the entire sitting. The benefit of this activity for everyday life may not be evident to those who don’t attempt it. But neither are the benefits of lifting heavy weights and setting them down. Both are special exercises for strengthening our capacity to meet the requirements of living.

Counting breaths doesn’t sound like a very difficult assignment. But it would be astonishing to find anyone who could count her breaths for twenty minutes without previous practice. The beginner would do well to start with five minutes and gradually build up. Even at five minutes she can’t expect immediate success. Long before the time is up, she will have wandered off into the fathomless realm of her life’s unfinished business.

When we catch our mind wandering away from the count, we should simply start again with the number one, as though nothing had happened. Every time we do this, we increase our ability to remain undivided as surely as each lift of the barbell improves our physique. After two or three months of daily practice, the increment in our mental efficiency and in the pleasure derived from daily life is so noticeable as to take almost all practitioners by surprise. It’s hard to believe that such an intrinsically trivial activity can do so much. The same can be said of pumping iron.

The major obstacle to regular practice of this exercise is the impression that it’s too boring to get through. This is nothing more than a rationalization. How can typists tolerate typing and assembly-line workers stick rods into sockets for eight hours if we can’t endure five minutes of tedium? Can anything in the world possibly be so dull? It isn’t boredom that makes us quit. We start to count our breaths and are shocked to discover that we can’t perform what seems to be a trivially easy task. It’s hard for us to admit that our mind is so totally out of control. So we tell ourselves that we could have done it if we wished, but that it was too boring. Then we go to our desk and make out bills for the next hour. This absurd rationalization may be dispensed with if we understand from the start that counting breaths doesn’t come easily to anyone. We’re bound to fail in our first attempts. If it were easy, there would be no point to it.

The Universe never asks more than one thing of us at a time. In the midst of a thousand desperate emergencies, we have only to attend to the most desperate emergency. The remaining 999 are simply not our concern. To be sure, disaster may strike if we don’t get to them in time. But in this respect, the objective situation is really the same as in our unharried moments. Having taken care of all the business that seemed urgent, we may step out of the house and be run over by a truck. It’s only because we don’t think of it that the menace of trucks doesn’t make us feel more busy. Trucks don’t present themselves to us as a problem. But neither are we presented with the known problems that can’t yet be dealt with. For the time being, they can also be put out of mind. We accomplish nothing useful by trying to hold them in consciousness. And the attempt to hold them interferes with our work on the task at hand.

In reality, there’s never more than one thing to do. Being too busy is always a trap.