Customer Reviews

One Who Is Not Busy, The: Connecting with Work in a Deeply Satisfying Way

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Darlene Cohen's The One Who Is Not Busy, provides a fresh take on the concept of multitasking. She points out, accurately, that the reason we get overwhelmed is because we are focusing on too many things at one time. Darlene encourages us to use the Buddhist practice of one-pointed-attention to focus on what we are doing in each moment.

She provides a number of exercises to help you increase your ability to stay focused. One of the most helpful concepts for me was the idea of narrowing and expanding your focus at will. By bringing consciousness to your focus you can choose when to focus on a single tree and when to take in the entire forest.

Admittedly, some of the exercises seem like they would be better suited to a workshop setting than a book. And her writing style is a tad serious for my taste. But overall this book has been very helpful for me.

The kicker on this book title says it all.

Connecting with work in a deeply satisfying way...

We don't need to view our work and leisure worlds (if they exist) as fundamentally different. When we give anything we approach with our full attention we are continually connected to our own feelings, thoughts and sensations...One needs to ask without these elements of life, where is the joy? This book gives a multitude of tools to encourage this connection through very simple meditative approaches to everything from sitting at a desk to breathing during a conference call. As a lifelong multitasker, my curiousity was piqued by it's premise. I enjoyed reading it and have begun incorporating many of the tools into my daily practice of work and life.