Multi-Tasking: Just Say No!

Standing in line at Petco, a man carrying a sack of dog food under one arm yakked on his cell-phone while examining a rubber mat hanging near the check-out line. Because he couldn’t quite grasp the mat with his one free hand, the mat swung around and knocked a ceramic mug to the ground, shattering it into a dozen pieces. This caused the cashier to leave her station to clean up the mess, thereby slowing down the entire line of customers waiting to pay for their purchases. Another fine mess which could have been prevented if the man in question had simply been paying attention to what he was doing instead of trying to do too many things at once. And another example of mindless and unnecessary multi-tasking, since the phone call sounded to this bystander like an inane social conversation that could have waited five minutes.

One of my pet peeves is cell-phoning drivers. It seems like every time the driver ahead of me forgets to go when the light turns green, or cuts someone off to change lanes at the last possible minute in order to make a turn, it’s because he or she is on the phone. I sometimes wonder how so many people can have so many important calls that can’t wait until they get home when, just a few years ago, cells phones didn’t exist, yet people managed to survive somehow. Now some cars come equipped with DVD players and other assorted high-tech gadgets. The new opportunities for distracted driving boggle the mind.

I believe in doing one thing at a time. I learned a long time ago that if you have five files open on your desk at the same time, none of them will get done and some piece of paper is bound to get lost. Finish one thing, put it away, then start the next one. Some people think they’re being more efficient if they can talk on the phone, read email, and write a budget report while eating lunch when, instead, each task is only getting a small portion of their attention it needs. The increasing trend toward doing more than one thing at a time is not resulting in a society that is more efficient – just more distracted and accident-prone.