A friend of mine is one of them. He is always engaged in several of these activities at the same time. And it is very fascinating to look at him sitting there, working on his laptop, while trying to participate in the conversations around him, and answer all his incoming phone calls and text messages, while trying to listen to ESPN. “Being engaged in these technological activities” is his pride and his passion. He seems to be proud of the fact that he appears, at all times, to be involved in more tasks than anyone else. “I love to multi-task!” he states, as if his visual behavior isn’t enough to reinforce this point.
Personally, I am not in favor or against anyone who believes that multi-tasking is great. If doing many things at the same time is your passion, good for you! Do it! However, I want my friend and the other busy bees to understand that multi-tasking isn’t my passion. And no amount of their preaching and sermons will ever make me a convert. I became most aware of this fact one day when my friend said to me “I accomplish twice as many things in an hour than I did in the past!”
And I responded “Then you must have twice as much time for leisure?”
To which he responded, “No, I don’t want leisure. I like the fact that I get twice as many things done in a day.”
To which I responded, “Your life is the racing up to a drive thru window, quickly ordering fast food, which you will hurriedly gulp down without enjoying. My life is patiently waiting to be seated in a five star restaurant where I will take my time enjoying the music, the ambience, the conversation, the wine, the soup, the bread, the sight taste and smells of the main course, and the dessert. And my senses will savor the moment well into the future.”
To which he responded, “Huh?”
And our conversation ended, as I knew it would, since I had carefully constructed my last response to expose the barrier between us.
Technologies, in their view, are tools that enable them to double the amount of work they will perform in an eight-hour work day. Technologies, in my view, are tools that enable me to accomplishing in four hours the amount of work that it once took me eight hours to perform. This means that I gain four hours for the purpose of adding depth and substance to my work, and still leaves me, hopefully, with enough time to read, write, take pictures, and yes, look around the world and enjoy it.
I am not against quantity as long as it is needed and serves a purpose. However, I believe that time should be used to create more depth, more substance, better solutions, and more balance approaches. This is never the case. Instead, most multi-tasking products are intellectual fast food. They are quickly served by very unhealthy with minimal nutrition to digest.
