“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!
