Texting. Two Different People. While On A Conference Call.

Don’t do a thought experiment; do a real experiment. 

You just sat through an hour-long meeting, and you checked your iPhone a bunch of times during that meeting.  I know you did.  Because everyone does. 

Here’s the experiment:  Check your “sent” folder to look at the messages that you wrote during the hour.  How many of those messages actually had to be sent during the hour, and how many could have waited for the meeting to end? 

Maybe you’re an extraordinarily important person, and everything was urgent. 

But it’s far more likely that none of the messages was urgent.  You read your mail, and responded to the messages, simply because you brought your iPhone with you to the meeting, and you couldn’t resist the toy once it was there.  

Consider this:  You could have resisted the toy just fine if you hadn’t brought it with you in the first place.

I have some news for you:  You can’t multitask.

The brain can process only one idea at a time.  You can think about two ideas in quick succession, but you can’t think about two things at once.  It’s not possible.

So you can’t multitask.

Suppose you’re on a conference call.  Summerson poses a question to Jarndyce.  There’s a pause.  Jarndyce turns off “mute” and says, “I’m sorry.  I didn’t catch the question.  Could you repeat it?”

What was happening?

Jarndyce really, really, really didn’t fool anyone.  He was texting, or emailing, or scrolling through a news feed, or playing a game.  But he was not listening to the phone call.  And everyone on the call knows it.

In fact, Jarndyce hasn’t been listening to a word that’s been said during the entire call.  He’s been doing other stuff for the last half hour.  And we all know it.

Jarndyce doesn’t think we know it, because Jarndyce is a fool.  But we know it.

Suppose you’re in a meeting.  You pick up an iPhone to check your messages.  You type out a response to a message.  Then you check your stock portfolio.  And then your news feed.  Then you realize how this looks and start acting like you’ve been tending to urgent emails all along.

Do you really think you’ve fooled anyone?

Everyone in the room knows that you’re rude, because you picked up your phone and started playing with it while someone else was talking.

You wouldn’t have done that if you were in a meeting with the president, a senator, or a justice of the Supreme Court.   You wouldn’t have done that during a meeting of the board of directors.  Come to think of it, you wouldn’t have done that if you were in a meeting with the CEO, or the CFO, or anyone else who mattered.  For those people, you can be polite. 

But not for me.  I’m just chopped liver.  So you play with your phone while we’re in a meeting.

You think I don’t notice?

I’ve heard of horrible examples of this.  I’ve heard of a lawyer checking his phone while making a pitch for a big piece of new business from a corporation.

You think the corporate representatives at the meeting didn’t notice?

Given the choice between hiring the person who pays attention and hiring the person who’s ignoring you even before he’s been retained, who would you hire?

Please don’t think you’re fooling anyone with this stuff.

You can’t multitask.

We know when you’re trying.

You aren’t getting away with it.

And you’re paying a price.

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Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at [email protected].