The Surprising Power of Doing One Thing at a Time

Hopefully, you’ve not had the rotten luck of a boss who expects you to become a shell of a person just to meet some company targets. This, sadly, isn’t the case for a certain Andrea Sachs, a talented writer turned fashion intern for Editor-in-Chief, Devil Wearing Prada, Miranda Priestly. Alright, so The Devil Wears Prada is fiction, but isn’t fiction almost always a depiction of real-life people? An amalgamation of the very same pressures that we face most days. Like many of us, Andrea, or Andy, had a dream – to write.

In order to get there, she was expected to do the impossible, complete a thousand tasks a day, and never complain about it. In the end, whether you read the book or watched the film, you understand it wasn’t a life that made her very happy. 

Doing one thing at a time is perceived as ineffective. Instead, why not do all you can and get the most done in the shortest amount of time? Perceptions are often far from reality; myths perpetuated by a work culture that chews up people and dreams just to spit them out again.

Ichigyo-Zanmai: One Practice, Full Attention

Ichigyo-zanmai is a Japanese philosophy that is a refreshing shift in mindset. Ichigyo is most simply translated to ‘one practice’, while zanmai means ‘concentration’. Together, they speak of the art of doing one thing at a time, the art of focusing all of your energy on a single, purposeful action. Instead of committing parts of yourself to different errands, you pledge yourself fully to the moment, and in doing so, complete it to the best of your capacity. 

Meditation requires our brains not to wander. If our minds do veer a little off path, then we must gently pull them back and focus again on the meditation. Ichigyo-zanmai is an almost meditative practice, as you must be softly aware of your mind shifting between tasks, and thus learn to pull back your focus to the task at hand. Many believe focus is a kind of superpower, but focus is a skill, and skills can be trained. The Miranda Priestly of the world, however, and current societal professional expectations, make it a particularly difficult skill to train.  

Focus in a World That Fractures It

Research shows that in practising ichigyo-zanmai, we quietly reduce our levels of stress and find a deeper manner of interacting with a topic. The great philosophers – Albert Camus, Hypatia of Alexandria, and Socrates – wouldn’t have come to such profound conclusions had they not had time to deeply interact with certain lines of thought.

Andrea Sachs put her dreams to the side because she was too mentally exhausted to create. How can we produce meaningful things if we cannot focus our energy on them? If all we can allow is half a distracted thought, a mind running on stress and adrenaline, and constantly existing in the near future, but never the present?

There is an old Zen proverb that affirms, ‘When walking, walk. When eating, eat.’ This is to say that our nature can only flourish when we are fully committed to the present. If we do something, we do it fully, and in that way, we connect with our humanity and care for our minds and bodies.

The manner in which we exist now, spreading ourselves thin and taut, does not reflect our nature. Woven through research, philosophy, and literature is this same message – multitasking is not the heart of productivity, but the enemy of it. 

The Creative Cost of Multitasking

I am not immune to the temptation of doing too much at once, but each time I catch myself multitasking, I practise that same meditation of gently pulling back. Remembering that being present is a gift to myself and the work I am creating. Now, one of my favourite rituals is placing my phone away from me, sometimes not even playing music, and doing something in an almost meditative state.

I let my mind wander a little – notice perhaps how lovely the sun looks through the window, the sound of birds or people chattering – and then remind myself of the task at hand. Practises like these take time. Focus and concentration are skills I have worked at over many days, weeks, and months, and I am on an ongoing journey of trying to be more present and human. 

We all have our dreams, and even if we do not consider ourselves creatives, we all create in some way or another. A human being needs expression, and their minds work best when under philosophies like ichigyo-zanmai, or the Zen practise of monotasking. 

The Courage to Slow Down

One of The Devil Wears Prada’s most famous quotes was spoken by the villain and cruel boss, Miranda Priestly. In a moment where Andy seems to doubt the allure of the high-fashion world she is working within, Miranda says to her, ‘Oh, don’t be silly – everyone wants this. Everyone wants to be us.’ 

For Miranda, the price of success is at the expense of the happiness of everyone around her, sustaining a personal life, and being a kind person. Andrea is not willing to make that sacrifice. She wishes to break free of an idea that has constrained the working world around her and chase what she really wants, knowing that one can only spread themselves so thin before ceasing to exist.