Not, not me. I have a mind like a steel ball – smooth, shiny and dangerous at high velocity. My colleague though, has obviously forgotten to eat his oatmeal this morning.

On answering questions: I get asked and so answer the question. Three minutes later he asks again. So I politely tell him “well, if you just listen when I speak instead of thinking about what you’re going to say next…” When we’re down to thirty seconds between the repeats I get a bit exasperated.

He’s bouncing off the walls, and this without even having had any coffee yet. So I tell him to piss off, go and have breakfast. We sometimes have breakfast at this local bakery – it’s a five minute walk and they always have amazing bread. I ask my colleague to bring back a bun for me… but I’m not holding my breath, or anything.

Thirty minutes later he zips through the door, runs about like a headless chicken and is halfway out the door (late for a meeting) when I quietly ask him if he perhaps remembered to get me a humble piece of bread. The sheepish look was totally worth my lack of lunch.

When we discuss stress management, you know, he always claims to excel at multi tasking, and he is good at it, I’ll give him that much. Problem is just the little details always seem to fall right through the cognitive process. Separating the wheat from the chaff can be an important ingredient in multi tasking, but if that means your co-workers go hungry – you’re probably not all the way there yet.

ROL