Undivided attention — 3 months ago
Due to my job I do have to listen to a lot of people giving me a lot of, often unimportant or irrelevant, information. Because of this I often find that I’m half-listening to people, trying to work out what the problem is and whether I am expected to offer a solution. Often, I’ll realise with relief that I don’t need to do anything about what they’ve said so I just make some kind of suitable ‘uh huh’ noise and they go away. Hours later when the other million things on my mind have been dealt with, I realise that what the person was telling me (while not important to me) was quite important to them and that I really ought to have showed more interest. Of course, by that time, it’s too late and I feel bad and they probably do too.
It’s really hard when you’ve got loads of things to deal with to stop and give someone undivided attention but I’m going to try it for ten days and see if I go under…
