Multitasking People

“You can multitask things. You can’t multitask people.”

The speaker repeated that several times at my orientation last week.

How often do I try to multitask people? I call out, “I’m listening!” when I’m really throwing laundry in and deciding how full I can make the barrel and still consider my clothes clean after the cycle. I talk on the phone, but I’m not fooling  my conversational partner, she can hear the clackety-clacking of keyboard keys through the phone. I watch a movie with my roommates, but my eyes stay glued to a different screen the entire time.

I’m terrible at multitasking people.

It was a fear of mine as I upgraded to a smart phone. I didn’t want to have the phone grow directly into my hip, as if my joints were dependent upon being connected continually. I don’t carry my phone with me at work. I leave it in my room at home typically. It’s just so distracting.

And dishonoring.

It doesn’t respect my friend or family member to be interrupted by a cute little chirp every few minutes of a conversation. I am willing to multitask things: do laundry and vacuum, pay bills and dust, file and sautee with reckless abandon! But I don’t want to multitask people.

May this be true in my life!

attached to cell phones

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