(This article is a follow-up from the ones published in previous weeks, episodes 0, 1, 2 and 3, y en las próximas semanas se irán publicando más episodios)

Have you ever stopped to count the number of applications running simultaneously on your phone? Mobile phones, like all computers, are designed to be able to run multiple programs in parallel; some of them are very easy to identify, like the different apps we have installed over time and we frequently use, and then there are others, like the operating system processes, that we don't usually even notice but that are indispensable for the device to work.

We as human beings work similarly: our conscious mind performs certain voluntary tasks, the ones we choose to do, which would be the equivalent of our phone's apps. But in addition to that and at the same time, our unconscious mind is performing a variety of other tasks in an automated and completely involuntary way, without any thought intervention: it's constantly receiving and processing information coming from the external world as well as the body's organs, and it regulates all our bodily functions in order to better adapt to the environment and our current situation.

Now, it's worth noting a fundamental difference in how computers work compared to humans: the human brain can only focus consciously on one thing at a time. We can fool ourselves into thinking we're doing several things at the same time (what's commonly known as multitasking), but in reality, what we're doing in those instances is just changing context very quickly, very often. And each of those changes requires an extra effort to get back to focus on the task again.

Multitasking = continuous partial attention

So, similarly to those times when our phone is really slow because it´s overloaded with too many apps running simultaneously, and as soon as we close a few of them, performance improves, the more we can close other applications in our mind and focus only on the task at hand, the more efficient and productive we will become, and the less mental tiredness we will suffer.

In fact, that´s the basis for all mindfulness techniques and exercises, learning to focus on the here and now, on the present moment, and being able to direct our attention consciously..

This also gives us an additional advantage, something that´s badly needed in this modern world: the ability to focus more deeply on a particular task, which is something we can never achieve through multitasking.Once we recover our ability for deep focus, like when we were kids and could play for hours, it´s much easier to let creativity and ideas flow more freely.