Multi-tasking and Relationships

Multi-tasking. It’s something that everyone seems to be doing, and unfortunately, they aren’t doing it very well.

I have found myself recently becoming more and more of a multi-tasker. For example, I may get dinner started while I am in the middle of cleaning our apartment. Something like that isn’t a terribly big deal because most of the time in the early stages of cooking, it isn’t completely hands on.

However, an area that I have also been multi-tasking in is doing things while I am on the phone. At first it started off as just doing mindless stuff like folding while I was mid-conversation, but lately I have been catching myself on the phone with someone and checking my emails. Both of those activities require complete attention, you can’t retain what you read while you listen to what someone is saying. It just doesn’t happen.

I’ve found that when I start doing that, I am no longer respecting the person I am on the phone with. I am choosing to do a task that can wait over giving someone my full attention. And that’s just not very polite. Especially since it’s completely obvious when someone is no longer paying attention.

Of course that scenario can also be replicated when you are actually with people. How many times have you been spending time with friends or family to notice they are all on their phones? (Maybe they are checking social media or texting). It’s kind of gotten out of hand.

This behavior started to creep up in my marriage too. I will admit to being the biggest culprit because I work from home so if my phone rings I have myself trained to react. Josh and I could be mid-conversation and if my phone goes off, I lose my train of thought because I have this knee-jerk reaction to check it.

Since we didn’t want technology or “multi-tasking” to get in the way of our relationship, we developed a no phone zone. So starting at about 7:30, we put away our phones and computers and enjoy the evening together. More often than not we sit around and talk about things that we normally would not have if we were both distracted. It has really benefited our marriage to take that time for just us.

I know that multi-tasking is a way of life and something that is not likely to go away anytime soon, but I have decided I am going to continue to make a conscious effort to not multi-task my time with other people.