I don’t know how you are when it comes to this but when I’m in the zone, it’s pretty tough to break my concentration. I’m one of those people who could totally tune you out while you’re talking to me if I happened to be focused on something else. This can be both a good quality and a challenging one. One of the things that annoys me way more than it should is being interrupted. If I’m in the middle of something that I’m really concentrating on, don’t talk to me. I want to be left alone and I want you to understand that what I’m focusing on is way more important than any reason you might have for interrupting me.

I have found at times however, that sometimes God is at work in the interruptions. Someone comes up to you or calls you at what seems to be an inopportune time and you have a choice to make. Are you going to shift gears and focus on that person or are you going to blow by? Now, there is certainly wisdom in focusing on what you need to focus on and tuning out unhelpful interruptions. That being said, you have to be careful that you don’t judge all interruptions as mere inconveniences to be discarded as quickly as possible.

I just had someone interrupt me from something that I was doing and I could tell that it was a conversation worth having. At first I was kind of annoyed but I quickly realized that it was good to make the time and chat with this person I normally wouldn’t get to talk to. Now, I don’t know if anything huge will ever come from that conversation but you never know. My encouragement to you would be to stay open when you are interrupted. Sometimes the interruptions are merely interruptions and you just need to stay focused on what you’re doing. There are times however, when God is at work in the interruptions. He may choose to send someone your way at what seems to be an inconvenient time and it is up to us to be ready.

Have you ever experienced an interruption that turned out to be more important than the original task you were focused on? What did you learn from that experience?