I was on a webinar (yes, the word has stuck around much to my chagrin) today and while I was listening on the phone and watching on my notebook, the host pushed a message onscreen to join the conversation on Twitter. So, I checked Twitter, and there were already 50+ people on Twitter talking about the webinar. So, the host basically told everyone to get distracted, check Twitter, talk amongst yourselves while we drone on and on in the background and show slides that no one will view.
The host broke a big rule of presentations: always pass around handouts at the end of the presentation (unless they are CRITICAL to understanding the presentation itself) otherwise you will lose your audience while they stare at the handout while you’re talking.
Sure, everyone was multi-tasking during the webinar, right?
Multi-tasking, it has been shown, actually rewires your brain and makes it less and less likely over time that you’re able to focus strongly on any task, and efficiently switch from task to task. Men’s brains especially have been proven to not be able to multi-task. For some reason, over the past 10+ years, the ideal of being a multi-tasker has taken firm hold in our connected, always on, digitalized culture.
Multi-tasking means you’re not paying full attention to a bunch of tasks and activities all at the same time. We’re losing the joy that can be found in dealing with a single conversation, one project, one activity or a special task without distraction. We’ve become impatient, annoyed by silence, annoyed by a lull in activity or conversation, and overall less happy and more stressed, I think.
I’ve had bosses who were big multi-taskers. Every time a subordinate went to them to discuss anything (from the weather to highly important business issues), they often took calls, checked emails, surfed the web and posted on Twitter during the conversation. That’s not multi-tasking, it’s rude and unprofessional.
We owe it to ourselves to pay attention to the NOW, to the MOMENT. We miss so much detail and nuance when we multi-task.
There’s beauty in taking time and immersing ourselves in the present. There’s a quiet glory in being a uni-tasker.
