“I was listening to it on my headphones while I was working…”
– one of my favorite local sports radio hosts, who either didn’t fully “get” what he was listening to or didn’t do his work full justice…
No, the lyric isn’t in the title today, but if you’re listening in your headphones, try to hear Bob Seger’s “Against The Wind.”
Because that’s what we’re doing when we’re trying to multi-task. We are either running against the wind or more accurately, trying to move in two directions at the same time. (To my knowledge, only Barry Sanders was able to do that…)
It’s why texting and driving is such a bad idea. It’s why looking at our phone when we’re supposed to be in a conversation is such a bad idea. It’s why trying to do two things at once is such a bad idea. And when we add a third thing or a fourth thing, we multiply the baditude of the idea. (I am pretty sure that “baditude” is a word — Grammarly be danged…)
As Jeremy Clarkson says, “Multitasking is the ability to screw everything up simultaneously.”
Maybe we had the TV on while we worked from home. Maybe we watched the kids playing in the backyard while they were in school from home while we worked from home. Maybe we just thought we’d fold one load of laundry while we were on the 11th conference call of the day.
Here’s the deal. Multitasking doesn’t work!
As we transition back to the office, back to the team, back to the face-to-face interaction we’ve hungered for, let’s do it justice. Let’s be present. Let’s be fully present. Let’s do the thing we’re doing — to the benefit of whomever we’re doing it for…
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