Stay Centered
When I smashed my toe (see the post on it), I was trying to pay attention to too many things at once. I was on the headset telephone with someone helping me with a computer issue when I heard a car come into the driveway. I went to the window while talking on the telephone. I had to carry the little phone cartridge in my hand, as it was wired to the headset. My mind was still partly on the page up on the computer. Out the window I saw it was my wife. I somehow got the notion I needed to greet her at the door to let her know I was on the phone.
Multi-tasking
So my attention was pulled five ways: to the person on the telephone, to my computer screen, to the phone cartridge in my hand, to the window, and to the front door downstairs. My brain waves were being stretched like mental taffy.
The Leaning Tower
One more piece of the puzzle contributed to my little accident. The tower of a radiating oil heater leans. The heater sits on four, plastic wheels-cheap things, really. Two of the wheels have become crunched in their bases, which makes them shorter. These two wheels are on the same side, long-ways, making the heater lean on that side.
The leaning tower of ouch
Too Fast for a Scattered Mind
When I walked past the heater on the way out of my office, I bumped it with my leg. A leaning tower doesn’t take much impetus to begin leaning faster. And faster and faster. I was walking in the direction it was plunging. The phone cartridge was in my right hand. In the second or two it took the heater to gain horizontality, I tried to both catch the radiator with my left hand and step out of the way with my left foot. I almost caught it, but the weight slipped out of my hand. I almost slid my foot clear too. With my attention so divided, I didn’t quite get free of the crash shadow.
A Crashing Lesson on Focus
Here was another lesson for me on staying focused. In Qigong, we learn that it is best to be in the moment. Multi-tasking is just a way to escape the power of focus, and it is dangerous.