Look for the interruptions: they are your job security!
If you work with people in any capacity, expect to be interrupted. The only people who are not interrupted are hermits and prison inmates. You and I should be thankful for interruptions.
That’s not always an easy concept to understand. You want to be productive. Interruptions break your train of thought, and your train of activity. Wouldn’t it be easier if “they” just stayed away?!
But think of these situations where interruptions are the whole reason your “job” exists:
- Motherhood. Any mothers want to share about interruptions? When your children are little, you can’t so much as eat or shower without being interrupted. And forget time to clean, or sleep, or go shopping. But those interruptions come from the very little people you became a mother for in the first place.
- Marriage. Your husband needs your attention in deciding how to handle a financial issue. Your wife needs you to listen while she unloads about a coworker’s harsh comments. And if your spouse gets sick everything is interrupted! But what a lonely existence it would be if there was no one there to interrupt: that’s what marriage is about.
- Business. Customer service, retail, health care, sales – those are just a few of the areas where if you’re not interrupted, you don’t have a job. You are there for the purpose of being interrupted. Those interruptions are clients, customers, patients, and you can’t survive without them.
- Ministry. If you’re in it to help people, how will you be able to help them unless they interrupt you? In some way every phone call, every person who comes up wanting to talk, every letter or email is an opportunity to do the very thing you believe God asked you to do.
People in any of these fields who dread interruptions are missing their reason for being. If you are not regularly interrupted, you are unnecessary. You may need to learn how to manage them. But learn to look for, even treasure interruptions.
Your turn: How do you respond to interruptions? How do interruptions relate to the very reason for your “job”? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
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