Slashdot Mirror
Life Interrupted
sch7572 writes "Seattle Times carried this story which may be of interest to those addicted to checking Slashdot for new stories every minute. Scientists are concerned that the Information Age is nurturing 'cognitive overload,' an umbrella term for the malaise people feel as a result of distraction, stress, multitasking, and data congestion related to increasingly sophisticated technologies. People multitask because it is expected, encouraged, and considered vital, yet cognitive scientist David Meyer reports that truly effective multitasking is beyond people's capabilities."
Can't...handle...another...story...about how modern society and technology is stressing us out...too much stress...ughhh...must wrap head in duct tape before it explodes...
I'm NOT checking every minute, just discovered this site.
i tried to RTFA, but between my e-mail, the internet radio i'm listening to, ESPN.com, and my actual work, I didn't have enough concentration...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
I caan read sleashdot storees, louk at pron and recompile mi kernel ot the same tyme. no porblemms heere.
MABASPLOOM!
I cannot believe it, how about walking and speaking at the same time ?, or have two conversations with two people... or two lines of conversation with other person... first post ?
"David Meyer reports that truly effective multitasking is beyond people's capabilities"...
I wish he had some time to come over and talk to my employers.
For my opinion, check my sig.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
cognitive scientist David Meyer reports that truly effective multitasking is beyond people's capabilities
Not yet, but I think eventually it might not be beyond our capabilities, just like learning how to produce heat from wood, and now from splitting atoms.
Did you say something?
I don't see this as a problem. I can remember all the IP numbers of our servers and almost everyone's password... dammit I forgot to wear pants again to work.
hack a day
For a while now I've been anti-interruption. I shun any kind of unsolicited alert about events such as new email arriving, a friend signing on to an IM network or the phone ringing. I find I enjoy activities a lot more now that I can see them through to completion without beeping and flashing alerts interrupting me at arbitrary moments.
not nuture!
I THOUGHT THIS was understood?
Really? I can usually handle walking, chewing gum, talking and breathing all at once pretty well.
Right now I'm at work, downloading porn through p2p, hiding from my boss, checking slashdot, posting, eating breakfast, and I'm chatting with a buddy on an instant messenger program. And I'm chewing gum!
But all those moms in SUVs with cell phones glued to their ear while they whack their kids scare me!
I spent some time working in the support department for one of my previous companies. After a full day of answering phones, answering questions, problem solving, and tracking things down, I would come home and be absolutely exhausted. All of the constant context switching was very bad for my mental health. Sure, I was able to do the job, but it totally numbed my brain out and made me a tired, frustrated person.
Now as a software engineer I try to work on only one thing at a time. If I try to do more than that then all of my efforts fall behind. If I can focus on one task though, it gets done and done right.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
...to see if I'm about to get sued by some organization.
I don't multi-task because I HAVE to, but often because I WANT to. I monitor a couple of dozen sites and I enjoy reading them. I like learning new stuff, constantly expanding my understanding of the world and of myself. Maybe it works for some and not others, but I wouldn't have it any other way. It just seems boring to me to do one thing at a time, not to mention a complete waste of precious time.
A blog like any other.
People multitask because it is expected, encouraged, and considered vital, yet cognitive scientist David Meyer reports that truly effective multitasking is beyond people's capabilities."
I suspect this is where the problem lies. The difference between "effective multitasking" and "bumming on the internet" is the crucial point. Both are attempting jumping from one task to another, the first for a pupose say doing your job. The second doesnt have a purpose or a structure so it has no more purpose than doing it itself.
It is almost as if you are addicted to performing a task (browsing the internet) and the performing of the task becomes the goal, instead of working towards, something at the end.
Net Online Anime Gallery's
At least, I assume that's what the article says - I would have RTFA, but then I might miss the next comment posted here.
I, for one, enjoy "cognitive overload." I revel in chaos, and sometimes I'll stay up all night, then go to sleep in my room when it's a freakin mess, the music on, lights on, window open, in my clothes, and in an unmade bed. Cognitive overload all the way!
In fact, multitasking -- a computing term that involves doing, or trying to do, more than one thing at once -- has cemented itself into our daily lives and is intensely studied. Research has shown it to be consistently counterproductive, often foolish, unhealthy in the long run, and in the case of gabbing on the cell phone while driving, relatively dangerous. Yet it is also expected, encouraged and basically essential.
Amen. Now we need the actual studies so that we can cite them for our bosses and clients so they can stop expecting it.
Once you have some sympathy from your PHB: The best defense, in this case, is a good offense. Declare office hours. Partition your time into usable, contiguous chunks dedicated to single tasks, and stick to the plan. You'll be glad you did.
I find that in math, if I work on several problems at the same time, all the while surfing or reading/writing email I can get it done just as fast, and perhaps more deeply than if I tackeled each one separately and sequentially. I guess it's the same in programming. If you get stuck on some pesky function, you leave it for a while, work on something else and then come back to it when you have a new idea. Don't tell me people can't multitask. BS.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
And here I sit, ghosting a PC, installing Panther on a laptop, reading Slashdot, and nibbling at some code (oops, and talking on the phone because it just rang as I was typing this). So am I distracted and not getting anything done, or am I multitasking?
A great article, very much worth the read.
but I don't care
They say that we use only 5% of the brain. You were saying...?
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
Story...too long...can't maintain...focus...
I'm not a doctor, but I play one in bed.
I'd believe every word of it if I weren't too busy not to read it.
I find it interesting that, at least in the studies I've read about this, that it affects mostly adults, and younger people are largely immune to it.
The young techno-elite grew (and are growing) up immersed in this sea of information, and are adapting to it. The older generations, having grown up in a much slower-paced environment, have difficulty adapting to the rapid change in the information channels available to them.
Personally, I love having this information available. I crave it. I'm constantly aware of the state of the world around me. When something of note happens to one of my friends, that knowledge circulates throughout our social circle almost immediately.
For anyone who's read Snow Crash, there are people referred to as "Gargoyles." They are connected to the net 100% of the time, interacting with it through wearable computing and visual overlays, streaming and feeding information as fast as possible concurrently with their physical life.
The idea might scare some people, but I find it fascinating.
I suppose it's simply that older people, not being used to this mass of information, are not ready to cope with the fact that most information is useless. Part of the ability to accept the input is the ability to filter the wheat from the chaff.
I read slashdot several times a day, but I don't read every comment or every article. I read the ones that will be useful to me in some way. I'm connected to the net most of the time, but I ignore an incoming IM if I'm busy doing something else.
People who aren't used to this environment have trouble ingoring things. You know the type. People who insist on answering the phone no matter how busy they are at that moment. People who check their email immediately whenever they reveive a "new mail" notification. These people can't cope with the available information, and are overwhelmed by it.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
I wish someone would do a study on the productivity of programmers. (Well they probably have but most PHBs haven't heard about it.) It seems to me that the working conditions of most people (let alone programmers) are counterproductive. Constant interruptions and administrivia can't be good. Sixty hour weeks have to be well into the law of diminishing returns.
Athletes seem to have the performance thing down to a science. It is well understood that you can't work your best pitcher nine innings and expect to win games. When will the PHBs come to a similar understanding of their employees?
Studies like this one seem to be a good step in the right direction.
So I shouldn't be reading 10 slashdot articles, reimaging 5 machines, recompiling the FreeBSD kernel, and making breakfast all at the same time? Then someone needs to extend the day to be 87 hours long...
But I call bull. Sorry, but these half-hearted "research" attempts are simply not conclusive enough to say anything decent.
You may mod me down now as Troll, please don't respond to this message.
Have been effectively multitasking for years. Unless of course they are addicted to crack.
My cup is empty , I am bereft, my coffee, my sanity, I have none left.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
If you knew how to manage your base while fighting, you would be more effective in battle. This carried over to Starcraft and Warcraft3 where I was vastly superior to other players. Its critical to multitask in games like that, but its helped me learn how to multitask other things.
One thing multitasking isn't good for is programming complex things while doing other things. When we're programming, we need to use our memory to keep track of all the variables and threads going on. If we start doing others things, we can be distracted because our brain has trouble with the memory and it impairs our coding.
Another thing that's not good to multitask is driving with a cell phone. If you get too caught up in the conversation, your attention can be diverted from the road. You can normally drive like a zombie, but in times of emergency response you could be screwed. Also if someone does something stupid to cause a wreck, people may blame your cell phone even if you weren't at fault.
God spoke to me.
is that I can see the fnords!
At least For my sw development, task switching takes place whenever building a project or running a test which takes few moments to finish. Since staring at the computer doing its thing doesn't speed things up, checking what's new on this and that seems a very appropriate thing to do. 10minutes later and you remember that you have a job to do. (oh, wait).
I think it was Stephen Hawking that said he's not sure the human mind can really understand black holes and such.
that's just astro-physicist speak for "I bet you a cup of coffee that you can't write a p2p client in less than 5 lines of perl"
cognitive scientist David Meyer reports that truly effective multitasking is beyond people's capabilities
It's just like PCs. You think that you can do multitasking, but if there are one-processor PCs it's beyond its capabilities.
But I can do Co-operative multitasking while I'm reading slashdot I watch TV and if my boss calls me I'm "working" too.
My city: Barcelona.
As some one who works in support staff I have never once seen any of the users I support multi-task. Some try but fail. It just isn't some thing that comes to them in their job.
:|)
And I disagree with the assumption that when you do several tasks that you are "multi-tasking" (OH NO, THE XMAS SHOPPING ON TOP OF GETTING THIS COFFEE!) as true multi-tasking is doing the actions at the same time. For example I am watching the news on the death tolls in India, listening to a cd of inxs, bitching about this link in irc and typing this reply all at once - all are being thought of at the same time while only limited by the speed of my fingers. (Note that grammar seems to have died.
So yeah I think this is a load of rubbish, I have only seen computer geeks multi-task in any true fashion. Any one else is kidding themselves from what I have seen, if they are getting stressed pretending to multi-task that is their own fault.
I ate your fish.
It's not like we read the stories...
Just look at the comments people leave. It's pretty obvious that the average Slashdotters attention span is about that of a -Oh look a bunny!
I can definitely say I'm affected by this..
To the point that sometimes I feel like "tweak" from South Park. (not because of caffeine either.. because I'm off the caffeine )
Its the only addiction I allow myself.. so don't you DARE take that away from me!
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
I think the article is generalizing too much. Firstly, multi-tasking is the wrong word to use as we're not simultaneously doing two or more activities, but are doing it in a round-robin, pre-emptive, or time-sharing kind of way. Again, one's ability to successfully pull this off depends on one's temperament, prioritization ability, and the kind of work involved. Repetitive work can easily be done in this way, for example, simply because after sufficient practise, the work itself becomes mechanical and doesn't need any cognitive ability. On the other hand, work that requires genuine thinking effort is done best without interruption, especially when one is in the "flow" or "zone". Again, if a person has the mental discipline to ignore other interruptions or re-priorotize the distractions, it's not too much of a problem.
In another vein, we've always had distractions, and the ones posed by technology are just a new form of it. What separates an efficient individual from an inefficient one is the ability to block out these distractions when needed, and only focus on the goal at hand. The rest is all FUD that these so-called cognitive experts throw in to justify their existence. I'm fedup of these experts extrapolating some extreme cases and generalizing them to create non-existent issues.
Cognitive overload. Bah. We've always had cognitive overload. Only the jingo is new. I think i should change my profession and start bullshitting my way into some real money.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of brains!
If Our Lord Savior Jesus Christ had wanted us to multi-task he would have created us that way!
for most people, they sort of try to do multitasking, and it works to a point, but under the covers it's all a massive kludge.
Can someone port Linux to people?
This article is yet another apologist for neoliberalism. See these quotes from the story:
"It's hard to take time off. Competition on a global level -- the company's bottom line and your job -- is fierce.
But WHY is competition so fierce? Why not MAKE our government dampen and control the leverage that competitive forces have on us? Why not adopt some of the lush welfare state facets of the Scandanavian social democracies? If your govt provides a solid welfare state to back you up if you fail, then you do not feel as harsh a grip when it comes to fear of competition. Hey, it works in Europe. France, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, etc., they mostly all work an average of 1500 hours a year (mandatory 35 hours weeks and 5-6 week vacations in most of those countries), and if you get fired/laid off, you can get years of unemployment. Competition is less of a threat, also because their trade law are not so....ahem..."free". They do not have the threat of third world IT workers coming at them. Like we do, right?
Why is that? Why do their protect them from the harshest competition, and ours exposes us to as much competition as possible?
Shelly Lundberg, a labor economist who teaches at the University of Washington, studies how families behave. The economy is about time, she says, not money. And as an economist, she takes a dispassionate view.
In other words, she is an apologist for neoliberalism and globalization!
"If you're feeling pressed for time and too busy, well, that's your choice," Lundberg says. "This isn't a poverty-stricken country; there is freedom of action. Time is of the essence . . . And what you spend your time on reflects your values."
In other words, TOUGH IT OUT, slave!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
True multitasking means a portion of your mind is working on it.
1. The computer is installing Panther and attending to the details--you aren't thinking about it.
2. Ghosting a PC is does not work your mind (see item one above)
3. What is 'nibbling' at code--are you truly coding or just browsing? I doubt you are doing much real work.
So you are really only doing two things, the phone and slashdot, and I'll bet either your reading comprehension or conversation is vacuous at best. In fact, you didn't understand the point about true mulittasking so I can see you aren't really reading well. QED.
In the past two centuries we evolved very fast in terms of science knowledge, but I don't think mother nature works that fast, our bodies have evolved but not that much, we live longer and are taller but it's more a consequence of medical advances and better living conditions. Has our brain evolved that much in terms of understanding capacity and multitasking? Probably not so unless we keep pushing it, it would stall. So maybe we can't do all the things we supposed to do but if we keep trying eventuality future generations will be able to do that and much more.
the Slashdot RSS feed to the televisions in my bathroom suddenly stopped working. *sigh*, well, at least the one in the shower is still working...
End of Line.
Some of us hang around chat rooms trusting people who often are not what they seem, and "flaming" -- harshly criticizing -- people we will never meet.
methinks the author has visited slashdot...
They may say that, but they're wrong.
We use 100% of our brains.
Ever seen a stoke victim? Yes, losing even a fraction of a percent of your brain material can devestate your functionality.
I have to be doing at least two things at once other wise I am terribly bored. Even when doing important things for work I have to have the TV on or music or chatting - if they aren't I cannot focus. Plus I enjoy it.
I ate your fish.
3 points:
1) I am hopelessly addicted to information overload - I browse multiple sites between, and often during consultations with patients, as well as listening to music and gazing occasionally out of the window. In downtime the payback is that I have the concentration of a ADHD Goldfish.
2) I am constantly reassuring patients that use of the mind protects against certain forms of dementia, and age-related loss of mental function. DOes this information age help protect against this outcome?
3) Sorry, gotta go and check GMAIL for my account details...
Does viewing more than one webpage at a time lower my concentration? How about visiting only one webpage, but not holding onto the mouse or using the keyboard?
Well, I'd rather deal with the stress of this information overload than say the stress of hundreds of years ago and even nowadays with underdeveloped countries worrying about their crops getting wiped out and starving to death.
:)
So I'm grateful for that
If humanity is to "evolve" toward multitasking, then multitaskers must have more children than non-multitaskers. Evolution is not learned, it is breed in to the species. Given the "lack of sex" jokes on /. and the likelihood that /.ers are the closest humanity has to multitaskers, I'd wager that multitasking does not raise fitness levels.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This is nothing more than an urban legend. It's kindof like saying "most people only use 1% of their hard drive" because you have this empty space that is used as a swap file, only a small portion is written to or read from at time, etc.
The human brain is a huge energy suck and if we didn't need it, it would be got rid of very quickly. True, there are some parts which can be electrically stimulated which don't produce hallucinations, but what does that prove?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
this is like that keanu movie johnny mneumonic...i dont think many people will get that
It may be beyond our capability, but not computers. :D
That's why I have mine watch the RSS feed for me
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
"All of this digital e-Crap is driving us all ^%$#@!& bonkers."
Yes! Another excuse for the ADD generation!
-dynamo
I have Slashdot on my RSS feeds, but at least it doesn't auto-update. I manually update.
Seattle Times carried this story which may be of interest to those addicted
to checking Slashdot for new stories every minute.
Ok, we all know that this one is going to generate at least 500 replies so let
me do the job for you. I'm ready and I've made all the calculations. Of
course, I didn't RTFA.
a) Cost of one space elevator: $10 Billions
b) Cost of a beowulf cluster of it: an order of magnitude higher (if you build
it in Soviet Russia)
c) Cost of the war on Iraq: $147 Billions
d) Man, I have a problem in trying to calculate the amount of money spent by
the US governement for each WMD found in Iraq. I get a freaking "DIVISION BY
ZERO". Must be some kind of Micro$oft bug. Please someone try it on FreeBSD
before it dies.
e) Amount of money spent for each Iraqi casualty (estimates of Iraqis
casualties during the war range from 1 citizen to 200 Millions citizens so
let's take 48571 as a good estimate): $3,026,497.29, that's the paper value of
3.14159265 Library of Congress at normal pressure and temperature conditions.
f) ???
g) PROFIT!!!
h) FP?
i) Getting a Funny +5 or being ridiculous and modded down to hell on Slashdot:
priceless.
Iraq: war to save the U
ADD people actually sit around wondering why everyone else cannot keep up with them and their racing, high-speed minds.
"Doesn't everyone cycle through five things at once in their mind?"
Now of course, I must mention that every couple of months my world completely explodes and I must spend entire weekends doing nothing more than staring at the wall while I bring my brain back from the abyss...but that's another story for another time.
Most of us probably feel that way, but the larger question is why do we want to multitask so much, and when we do multitask are we actually losing something in the process? Looking back on the time in my life before I became jacked in to the Net (my teens and early 20s), I realize that I spent a lot more time actually *thinking deeply* about things than I do now. These days I am aware of a broad range of interesting and useful information, and I consider myself fairly capable of filtering it well.
But even with filtering, the sheer mass of information moving through my consciousness is enough to keep me from sitting for any length of time and truly pondering something in detail. The times when I am able to unplug and think are the times I feel the most relaxed and at peace.
That's one reason some people cling to analog methods - they want to maintain a sense of cognitive equilibrium. Although I'm immersed in the Net almost every day, I prefer paper books to eBooks for the simple reason that I can detach from bits and pixels. Outdoor exercise does the same thing for me, and although I love my iPod, I don't use it when I'm out enjoying nature.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I love how people jump up and down about cell phone use while driving. What about eating? Tuning the radio? Talking to someone IN the car? Yelling at the kids in the back seat torturing the dog? No need to mention the INSANITY of women applying makeup while driving.
All these things distract as much if not more than a simple cell phone call, yet the black sheep is the phone. Strange, is it not?
Anything is possible given time and money.
It leads to wasted effort and stress, which leads to sloppy work.
Work hard, play hard, but not simultaneously.
When I'm working, coding or debugging or whatever, I'm like a dog with a bone, and I don't leave the task at hand until it's done. If anyone comes into my office and asks me for something, I tell them "when I'm done".
I accomplish a whole lot more this way, the code I write is better, so I spend less time debugging and testing, and in turn spend less time supporting it in the field (small company, we all wear lots of different hats).
One of my colleagues is the opposite, he tries to do 100 things at once. He's always stressed out, one of those "the sky is falling!" idiots. The work he does is invariably half-assed.
Also, since I'm always focused on one aspect of a system at a time, I wind up with a much, much better understanding of the ins and outs of our software than he has. I pretty much know the name, scope, and purpose of every variable, class, function, constant or subroutine in the code.
The other guy wastes tons of time looking up the same thing over and over again. He constantly pesters me with the same questions. "What does the AddressParse class do?" And I have to say: "it parses addresses you fucking chimp".
The rub is, he always looks like he's really busy because he's so stressed out, which is why he's still here. Whereas I'm generally pretty relaxed and laid back, and don't get upset about anything that happens at work, it just isn't worth it.
I get more work done, and of a better quality, but to a couple dopes around here, the fact that I'm not yanking my hair out with stress equates to me being lazy or slacking off, or whatever.
I'd never survive in a big corporate setting for that very reason. PHB's think that if you're not giving yourself an ulcer you aren't working hard enough. Fuck 'em, I'm not going to shorten my life for their bottom line.
Luckily it's a small company with common sense. I've unofficially become the lead developer, while he's unofficially been relegated to answering the phones and doing support.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
One of the more famous advocates of batch processing by humans is Don Knuth (the inventor of LaTeX and the author of "The Art of Computer Programming"). Read about why he doesn't have an email address. Of course, unlike us mere mortals, he can afford not to have one :-)
People have known about this for a long time, and it's been studied to death. I know that for those that see my posts I often mention aviation, but here we go again;
During flight training, one of the first things that you're taught is to focus on the important stuff first, and prioritize. Don't let an interruption from air traffic control interrupt the flow involved in actually flying the plane... don't let an attempt at navigation/location get in the way of flying the plane... in fact set your priorities so that you will be SAFE above all. I guess my training was a bit of a reality check for me... it taught me that "cognitive overload" can actually kill me quicker than you might think. As a result I focus on one task at a time until I complete that task. If workload is too high (say multiple interruptions at once), always remember to AVIATE, NAVIGATE, then COMMUNICATE. Anything else is fluff.
After I'd finished learning to fly, I found that I was unconsciously doing the same thing in my day-job. Although an email promising larger genitalia and better stock market tips might annoy on occasion, it isn't likely to kill me in that job. I took the principles of flying a plane and turned them to my day job (systems engineering, development etc.) At first it was tricky since everyone around me was attempting the same "multi-tasking" tricks that I had done before... on occasion it seemed that I was falling behind. Once I got into "the groove" so to speak I found that I completed projects more quickly, more accurately and actually found that I was happier with the results.
Maybe I should require that employees take flight training to ensure they prioritize and focus correctly...
I guess my point is; learn to prioritize those things that matter. If you have multiple projects that need completed, then prioritize those too. Work on one at a time... don't jump around and try to finish them all at once. You won't. I've seen too many people burn out early because they try to do everything at once... a lot of them are younger than me... and I'm not exactly old either!!!!
*Beep**Beep*[pager]
NEWS ALERT! Scientists are concerned that the Information Age is nurturing 'cognitive overload
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Many of you, while proclaiming your multi-tasking prowess, completely misunderstood the distinction between multiple tasks and true multi-tasking. This shows that your reading comprehension while your are 'multi-tasking' is in fact very poor.: you didn't understand the article. What is worse about this phenomenon, is the insidious belief that one really can do multi-tasking as many of you proclaim. That's because only your mind can tell if you are really doing a good job and its preoccupied with context switching. I am sure those distracted drivers on cell phones think they are driving very well--until they hit something or someone. Unfortunately, many of you don't realize your poor performance. Is it any wonder that half of the SlashDot readers don't completely RTFA? Now we know why. But then they post as if they know it all. QED.
I cant speak for everyone with ADD. But as someone who was diagnosed in the 5th grade. I must say that if I am not doing atleast 3 things at once my brain shuts down. If I am doing only one thing I get really bored and quit. I function best when I have a ton of things going on. Email + refershing 3 different forums + irc + /. + gaim + groklaw(loading it always takes forever) + purevolume(playing a band) + RSS feeds coming in + emerge -u world on test machine. My machine doesnt go 20 seconds without some sort of noise/alert going off. And I love it that way!
Heck, I feel malaise when I can't read stories on Slashdot, listen to ESPN radio, drink coffee, write some code for a DSP simulation, so on and so forth. Is it stressful sometimes. Yes. Am I exhausted some nights after work. No doubt. But I don't think I have ever experienced malaise.
Malaise for me is driving a dump truck all day, painting buildings, or something like that. Not that there is anything wrong with those activities. Lest I offend someone. However, they are definitely not for me.
I want my information....and I want it now.
Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
Something tells me that we already have budding multitaskers in our midst. Unfortunately, they are medicated into monotaskers because everyone thinks they have Attention Deficient Disorder ro some form of hyperactivity problem. Given that all the authorities are aging monotaskers, it no surprise that they can't deal with people who can't help multitasking because they have been raised in a task-rich, info-rich, stimulation-rich environment.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I currently do the UNIX tech support thing for a big web hosting company. Talk about multi-tasking...
When I first started I had alot of energy, especially after taking time of from employment in general as a wiring tech, and was a little amazed at how tired the majority of the day crew seemed. I was up and about running around fixing the hell out of the massive operation, doing my little job, but I found more often than not the most I could do was take notes and submit a ticket for others to work on as time became available. It didnt take long for me to figure out why everyone in there looked dead.
Now I work nights and I close just as many requests as during the day, but I have minimal call backs and am able to learn much more as the time I spend is focused mostly to the single problem at hand.
Interestingly enough that in itself is multi-tasking. The troubleshooting of DNS, mail server configurations, network issues, general user error, abuse, security, SPAM, databases, third party software blunders, scripting, PHP, Santy, firewalls, file permissions, passwords, billing errors, you-name-it-and-its-happened, and those especially important customers' issues with dozens of domains spread across as many computers can make one small problem feel like many.
All of that under the policy of NOT screwing up ANYTHING adds to the stress exponentially!
Nevertheless life moves on as we fix and fix and fix. Back and forth between the NOC, the Data Center, and the phones during the day with heavy call volume makes working at night with just as much work seem much more structured and productive. It is a lesson that goes unheeded by management as they continue to push people to their limits ultimately driving them away by over working them. I know I wont be going anywhere soon because the work I get to do is one by one clean up of left over tickets from the day crew. Poor guys.
Day or night, we are just used to it. Some people have been there for years and are just as happy as I am even though I am relatively new. Much of this has to do with loving the job and being able to actually get paid to fix a Linux box! I guess that in itself is the most important factor to consider when looking at how stressful a given occupation can be.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
I've been specially breed to support hyperthreading. Rather efficient multitasking unless they become deadlocked...I can only get away with that for so long before my wife comes and resets me.
I've told management: "I don't want to run an instant messenger, it hurts my productivity and is very stressful"
They replied: "It's the way we're doing business as a team"
Now I'm looking for a job elsewhere, because exactly as described in the article, I'm exhausted at the end of the day, I have a backlog of projects like you wouldn't imagine, it's stupid.
I've found myself reluctant to focus on complex tasks because I expect to be interrupted. Interruptions from instant messaging are often emergencies which occupy a whole day with stupid little updates and inappropriate prioritization. It seems the A-hole bugging you on IM is more important than the person silently and patiently waiting for the scheduled deadline.
I forget things, I can't read a document to completion or properly compose replies to email. Infact... right now, I'm avoiding a complex task... my IM will crackle to life any second with some stupid emergency. It feels futile to even get started when it takes an hour just to set things up to start working on it. Four times in the past two weeks, my instant messenger has dragged me into some emergency which has prevented me from working on it.
I'm trying to push management back to a usenet-style system for "I need help!" emergencies and a careful analysis of timelines and responsibility (i.e. fault and impact) before anyone picks up a phone. There's nothing wrong with interrupting people if there's an emergency, but management should be able to prevent it from reaching that point.
(Hey look, I got an instant message! and it should only take about two hours to deal with. Glad I didn't get started on that project.)
the hardest part of anything is getting started. If you are interrupted, you're constantly restarting; if your job is responding to customers, even a moderately busy day is exhausting.
I find it easier to go into my cave and code for 18 hours straight than to answer phones for three or four hours.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't check Slashdot stories every minute. I have no idea what they're talking about. I don't even know what Slashdot is... yeah, that's the ticket. I don't even own a computer. The internet... what's that? Yeah, that's the ticket!
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
In searching for a solution to this problem I could only find the following stupid rules which I can barrely apply:
* rules
o solve problems only as needed, do not jump as they occur
o there will not be less problems later if you solve more now
o use respiration to impose a rithm to the mind
o control the way you let your mind follow scenarios
+ follow scenarios to clear your mind
+ follow scenarios as a logic operation
o avoid recursive thinking
o relaxation is a state of mind, nice surroundings are only triggers
o some tasks lack of importance should discard them
* do not stress the universe
What worries me is the collapse of things like peer review.
In the past, if you wanted to get somthing into a scientific journal, you had to pass through 'security' in the form of peer review.
The notion of fact checking has been fading from our society. While I personally favor the ability to query a variety of sources and tell fact from fiction myself, at the risk of sounding arrogant I worry that some others might be less adept. Far be it from me to actually argue for the centralization of power, but I worry about our changing standards.
Back in the 1970s, the NYT had a sign up saying "There are two sides to every story. How many did you get?"
A reporter went back to the building a little while ago, and the sign had been replaced with another that said "Do you have your beeper? Is it on?"
Really speaks to a shifting in priorities.
In a course on advertising and mass manipulation I took one time, it talked about reaction formation. If you can concentrate on a topic, you critically analyze it. If you only pay partial attention, don't hear trigger words, etc. you'll be less critical. It's like the drug commercials that have distracting images and music as they read the list of side effects. The result of paying less attention to things is that people will think less critically, because that requires more mental energy.
I think that sites like Slashdot and snopes are important to at least provie a modicium of peer review and balance information when so many people just don't have the time or mental energy to fact check.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
reminds me of a joke.. How many ADD kids does it take to change a lightbulb? -LET'S RIDE BIKES !!!!
As an adult with ADD, the only way I can function somewhat normally is if I multi-task. I become extremely bored and stiff with inaction without handle numerous things at once.
I question if this is common with others with ADD. Perhaps ADD is an evolutionary offspring.
I'm 24. In the mid/late 90s I went to a 2800-person high school with more electives available than I knew what to do with - so I took an early "zero period" class before school technically started and skipped lunch to take newspaper journalism, leading to a 9-period day rather than the standard 7. Graduated with a 3.6 average in courses ranging from architectural drafting to the elitest (that's with an "e," not an "i") of five concert bands to AP Spanish lit. We used to joke that if you graduated from Roosevelt High's science & tech program, then you could a) bullshit yourself out of any situation and b) handle damn near anything they threw at you given half an hour to learn it.
My current job doesn't near-overtax me like high school did. Any suggestions for one that will? I learn quick, type 75 wpm, and information overload is my friend...
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
Funny.. we WOMEN have been multitasking since we got lunbered with the cooking, cleaning, ironing, washing, raising the kids, doing the shopping and organising YOUR lives... what, can't YOU handle it? Awww poor overwhelmed man!!!
If you had RTFA you would know that you are a dellusioned individual. You "WANT to" because you are addicted to the dopamine that is released each time you learn "new stuff" or "expand [your] understanding of the world".
Tell me, do you feel down, or groggy, or in any way sad, when you do not monitor your couple of dozen sites? What happens when you go for a day or two without internet access? These would be withdrawal symptoms.
So, you show a prime example of the problem -- no, in fact your are the very epidome. You think you are using every conceivable second of your life to the fullest. You have this push to experience everything immediately and constantly. But for what reason? Why do they have to all occur simultaneously? More importantly, how did you come about the decision that doing only one thing at a time is "complete waste of precious time"!?
Logically following your views to their conclusion would mean that the moment you focus on anything it becomes a waste of time. This is so absolutely flawed, I am now speechless.
Please take an objective view of yourself, and discover what your motives (if any) are for feeling the way you do. Then please respond and tell me how they are not in any way related to your dopamine addiction.
Personal example - I can deal with a fair amount of multiple tasking as long as it's the right kind of task. However, some things require concentration. For myself, this means putting headphones on and turning on some music. If I don't have something that will tune out everything else, I fall right back into "do a little of everything mode".
On the other hand, my wife has to be focused and has to have pretty much complete quiet or she can't do anything. That's not a knock (she almost has a PhD), but it does mean we have to plan things appropriately.
FWIW,
Ewan
---
Help me test this out and see if this is "for real"
"His study -- "Stressed Out on Four Continents: Time Crunch or Yuppie Kvetch?" -- found that the better off one is, the more he or she seems to complain about the time pinch. How can this be? Your opportunities and expectations grow as you grow wealthier, he theorizes, but time, which is finite, doesn't keep up."
:)
The simplier explanation is that as one has more and more money, it's relative value goes down and one is willing to spend less time for the same amount of money, ie time becomes more valuable. Simple supply and demand.
I know I'd trade more time for money if I (or my family) were low on money.
One could also argue those who DON'T complain about having enough Time are complaining about not having enough Money instead.
Anything is possible given time and money.
I for one welcome our new multi-tasking overlords.
For people that cannot handle reality of /. there is neowin.net
It is much slower pace over there.
I find, personally, that I will context switch if I'm doing a task that makes me wait more than 10 or so seconds. Compiling is a great example. Who can sit still and just wait for it to compile? It's a perfect time to browse the web, which leads to its own set of distractions.
Probably, if compiles and other long tasks were much shorter, it would be easier to maintain focus. Or perhaps I need to train myself to simply wait.
Men like to focus on one thing at a time -- generally pretty women, beer, or sports.
Women not only multitask, their logic operates on some quantum level where questions like "Does this dress make me look fat?" actually has an answer.
"We seem to be amazing ourselves to death."
This seems quite straight on target to me.
Multitasking is achieved (as I'm sure you know) but dedicating amounts of concentration into each task, plus keeping up with where you are up to. It does not allow me or anyone to by pass limitations with the body. Just to note my music is low enough so I hear it and the words but also hear the TV which is louder. Plus the fact that I am dumping nearly all of the information as it goes through. Eg out of that TV report I kept 75,000 all up dead and could rise to 100,000 before infections, and that the train that had 800 dead was revised up to 1500 dead - and basically nothing of the song except that it was by INXS and the track was Original Sin (but I don't need to keep the information of the lyrics as I already know them).
I could how ever sing a long to a song while typing this reply (which I am, New Sensation by INXS (from the same cd)) and working out a response to an unrelated question to compiling a kernel without rivafb support from memory to type to another use once I press submit. So on the whole I think I am 'truly' doing the tasks - to the effectiveness that I think it warrants.
I ate your fish.
I for one, too, enjoy reading multiple sites, while talking to people, while listening to music, maybe evening coding.
But there's no way I can do all that while watching TV or a movie.
I've friends that never go on the computer without having a TV right beside them or a movie window in the corner. I just can't do it.
Difference is, I guess, is that the movie/tv stream is continuous, while reading and coding can be easily interrupted and suspended until a message is replied to or a new post has been read. But when I watch TV or a movie, I tend to immerse myself completely in it, I don't like any distraction.
Did that make sense?
- shazow
Just as a thought, has anyone studied gender differences in this? From my experience, women are more used to multitasking than men. They've had to mind the kids, watch dinner on the stove, and do other household tasks all at the same time. Men tend to like to focus on one task at a time as they'd have had to do to hunt successfully.
;-)
Nothing against either gender, but just something I've noticed. I know both my husband and my father get very annoyed when the females of the family carry on two or more conversations at once - they feel we're not listening to them when in reality, we heard them & will answer them when we've finished the comment we're making in the other conversation
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/art/pacificnw/200 4/1128/cover2.jpg
Geek fashion at its best.
IMP
Homer: Every time I learn something new, it pushes out something old! Remember
that time I took a home wine-making course and forgot how to drive?
Marge: That's because you were drunk!!
...in his 1970 book Future Shock. Its theme was the relentless increase in transience, novelty, and diversity, and the resulting effects on individuals and societies.
I definitely agree that it is extremely difficult for most people to ACTUALLY multitask.
In school we did some reading upon some experiments that related to such concepts. I am sure many of you have heard of the ideas, but the basic conclusion was that human beings CANNOT keep track of more than 7 things at a time, and most (90%) people really cannot keep track of more than 3 things at a time.
The point i would like to make here is that it is specific to 3 or 4 conscious items. Basically... if you can do something so well, that you do not have to think about it, then you are more likely to multitask better. Like whe you first tried to walk, now you don't have to think about it, but it is still a task. Many of us are pros at writing code off the top of our head, and doing reviews and replying to emails without thought.... HOWEVER - DO NOT PRACTICE DRIVING, TALKING ON THE PHONE, EATING A BAGLE, AND READING THE STREET WHEN YOU ARE DOING 90 ON THE HIGHWAY!!!!!
thank you ~tim
There's nothing wrong with my attention span. I'm just filling out this form for a college application and - oh look, that dog has somebody's ham! This I got to see!!
... when someone asks me how long it will take to do something is "that depends how often I'll get emails/calls telling me to work on something else". Management these days don't care if you need to concentrate to do a good job, they're quite happy to bombard you with crap and expect you to get it all done.
For example, I was on Amazon last week shopping for Henry David Thoreau's Walden, which took forever b/c I *had* to find a copy that had a pub date of last year or newer. Like buying a 10 year old copy somehow diminishes the content or message...jeez.
"You spend too much time playing on that computer." LOL
The whole concept of not being able to multitask is something I could never understand. I routinely use two keyboards at once, and am in fact doing so right now.
With one keyboard, I'm typing this (right hand) and with the other am replying to an email (left hand).
I do have to keep switching (round robin) my focus on the two screens, but am concentrating on the text of both at the same time and doing so without a great deal of effort. I've always found however that people (even other geeks) tend to stare at me in disbelief when I do things like this, so maybe I am just a bit different somehow.
True multitasking really isn't impossible for people as some other posters have suggested, but I do agree that combining one "thinking" task (eg programming) with one "non-thinking" task (eg listening to music) is not true multitasking. I'd say however that what I do with two keyboards most certainly is.
All that in mind, I do find my writing style tends to get a bit muddled and incoherent if I try to hold a conversation at the same time as typing two different things at once - three trains of thought seems to be my absolute limit (and can wear me out very quickly too).
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
I write different sentences with each hand (at the same time). They don't come out all that legibly I guess (much less legibly than either hand on its own), and I may be simply timeslicing rapidly, obviously, but with practice my ability to do it is definitely improving.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
right now, im listening to the radio, drinking coffee, making a phone call, ripping a new cd to my ipod, and contibuting highly incisive comentarry to my faborite webiste, slushdot...and it's wll wifin my congiitve capacityes.
I mean, if information was aggregated in a effective way, we would spend far less time at getting your daily info-dose. ergo less 'multi-tasking'... but no, we don't live in a world like that. Darwinism is the game, and failing to play is a sure path toward extinction.
Why do you think many slashdotters don't RTFA? ...coz they to lazy? (maybe...)? ... I for sure don't allways have the time to READ every fsck'n article (of the stories I read) ever posted here
- (I assume from the little story-cap in the post if it's worth my time to spend RTFA... guess this wasn't, but I felt like writing instead
...*guess I had this on my mind for some time, and *now it felt like the time to blurb about it* :-)).
Which kinda proves that info around here isn't that effectively aggregated - if the summary of the story posted here isn't in-sync with what the original article says...I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
One reason people multitask is to keep their minds occupied while doing something that bores them. Fortunate are those who are able to work doing what they love. Or have at least figured out what that is.
that it's dupe. can't pull it out right now, but, it's a few months old. No one said that before 'cause i guess it's better than 1day old dupe.
We can if the tasks are simple and virtually automatic (think walking and chewing gum at the same time) but true, effective, efficient, meaningful multitasking is akin to jamming two TV signals down the same cable wire. You get static, not high-definition.
I thinks this hits it right on the head. Surfing and talking on the phone is not the same thing as juggling multiple large software projects while dealing with IM, Nextel phones, regular phones, meetings, e-mail, chatty co-workers, equally chatty bosses, support calls, etc.
I manage a small software development group, and I have found that reducing the number of "context switches" does increase productivity and reduce errors significantly. I also find that the developers' moral is higher. I help to do this by sticking to my guns and forcing our project stakeholders to evaluate the priority of their projects relative to each other. This helps prevent the "squeeky wheel gets the grease" syndrom. I also won't allow the developers to have Nextel phones or IM, though e-mail is necessary in this day and age.
The reason I do this is that I came from situations where I was being pulled into multiple directions constantly, and very rarely completed projects to my satisfaction. This is very stressful and does not promote good moral.
One last thing, as you may have noticed I have a pet peeve when it comes to Nextel phones. This is because anyone can interrupt me at anytime for any reason with very little effort. If the past the person would with have to walk over to my desk, or heaven forbid, dial a phone. Now a person just has to beep me when a question pops into their head. This wouldn't be so bad if people reserved for really important questions, but since beeping is so easy I'll get beeped regarding the most trivial things. Oh well, such is progress, maybe I'm just too old...
"Suppose you tape two empty toilet-paper rolls and take them over your eyes. Walk around like that, only looking through them for 30 or 40 minutes," Its been 2 hours now. I just saw my stairs. and then all the sudden there was the fridge. Now im at the stove and i cant find the fridge. Will someone come get me?
Around Spring of 2003, an article came out showing that people who multi-task are actually less efficient then people who do not multi-task. A number of tests were done and what it boiled down to is that every time you switch from one task to the next your brain has to reorganize. This wastes (noticeable) time. Also, even though you might be able to start working - your brain may not be finished reorganizing itself so you may not remember everything you do at the start.
I kind of agree and use some real life examples. For those of us who program - you sit down, you get in your grove and you start to code. Then someone calls. I generally have to unfocus from what I am doing and take a couple of seconds before I can even understand what the person wants. Then, when I am finished with the call, it takes me a few seconds to get back into my work (and hell I might of lost my grove).
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
There is one type of multitasking I believe everyone does alarmingly well. This is the ability to drive and at the same time daydream. I dont know how many times ive done this myself and then later tried and failed to remember actually driving.
Me: Hi I'm Rob
Group in unison: Hi Rob
Me: I haven't browsed in about 5 hours now, and I'm feeling pretty good.
Moderator: How has asbstince positively effected your social life?
Me: Well, my wife said she was thinking about moving back in with me and... *phone beeps* Can you hold on a second?
Schweet, a new story that was already posted last week and the week before, I'm totally gonna be the first one to make a "in soviet Russia" joke, screw you guys! *bolts*
*New member steps up*
Ted: Hi, I'm Ted, and its been 3 years since I browsed K5.
Group in unison: You haven't missed much.
Distributed proteome folding @ WorldCommunityGrid.org
Team Slashdot - Members:#1 Run Time:#1 Points:#1 Results:#1
an RSS feed will do the job nicely; you're using firefox* of course?!
at the slashdot home page, just click on the orange rectangle on the bottom status bar and add the RSS feed to your bookmarks toolbar folder.
*thunderbird also supports RSS, but I'm not impressed with it too much. Opera's RSS client is also quite reasonable. If someone knows of a *free* RSS client for Palm, I'd be grateful to know, I haven't found one yet.
truly effective multitasking is beyond people's capabilities.
If windows95 could fake multitasking, I can do it.
DON'T PANIC
I find that nowadays people at work are always trying to find a clever solution to a problem, and as soon as they find one they stop thinking about it. Our attention span is much too short.
When I work with older people, I'm amazed at how they can really think about something, a long time, and come up with a much more beautiful and robust solution to a problem.
I'm not that young (mid 30's), but working with programmers in their 50's is really different.
Try it! Library of Babel
Unfortunately, these technologies were implemented into our jobs with the sense that a worker spends the same amount of time that he used to at work. He is now responsible for many more things and when the work piles on (because many things go wrong at the same time), the employee is expected to multitask or spend more time at work.
When you try to do several intensive tasks at the same time, it naturally causes stress and inefficiency requiring more time out of the worker.
Well, that pretty much kills off the original promise of an easier life and less time at work. It seems that employers got all the benefits of technology by getting a worker of this time to do the same job it took many people to do in the past (and save on all that salary...).
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Seems to me that that's Douglas Adams' opinion.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
It's not (no way near) as hard lifting something low-weight (low brain/mental-strain), repeatedly (multi-tasking) ... then lifing something heavy-weight repeatedly (as many times as the low-weight).
And, as others here have said, one has to also factor in ones persons natural-abilities (*heck* we aren't "cut from the same cloth" ... so we don't have each other streanghts/weaknesses... etc (figurely speaking...)). Before determinig what is good/bad for one/what level of strain one can endure... etc....
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
"Ghost-hacked humans are so pathetic"
-obligatory GITS1 quote
I'm reminded of a note on Dr. Donald Knuth's web page. Dr. Knuth apparently ditched e-mail in 1990 after 15 years of use.
Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.
i used to check it every seven seconds, so i think once a minute is pretty good, you insensitive clod
Ohhhh, shiny!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
I used to be awful at multi-tasking until I started working in a call centre.
Talking, typing and flipping around between 4 different accounts entering information with arcane DOS shortcut keys becomes 2nd nature after a few months.
I can remember as a kid, way before PCs, cable tv, blackberrys and cellphones existed.....of journalists commenting on how people rarely cared about anything outside of their lives.
If there is a malaise it is probably a matter of people being self centered, overloaded, and/or not managing their time properly.
I've had the same experiences with multi-tasking. If you do it too much you just get drained and if you do it when you're drained, nothing gets done well or at all. The key is to switch off between focussed-tasks and multi-tasking. I think working on focussed tasks 75% of the time with 25% multitasking is a very good balance. The focussed-tasks get done well and there's a great sense of accomplishment. In crunch times, or to simply keep the mind out of tunnel vision, multitasking can be very invigorating. Doing only one method makes for poor mental health.
Right-on! I believe that this ADD phenominon is us adapting to our environment, or preemptively adapting in some way to this big Internet thing.
Too bad those who can't keep up aren't tossed by the wayside, tho. Economics supercede all laws.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
hey, wait a minute, I can read in the toilets without problems, I'm a multitasking genius!
Poor grammar? Incorrect assumptions? I will take offsense to this as my grammar was sound, and I made no assumptions. Everything that I stated was gleened from your post. Everything else were just questions.
Please show me specific examples.
Also, as for my "uninformed kind", you are grossly mistaken. I have been reading and posting to slashdot much longer than you have. Although I hate to compare UID, I will in do so in this case.
One more thing... How can you doubt that I read the article? I stated very specific information as written in the article, relating it what you wrote in your post, with some +1 Insightful added in for good measure.
He's a cog guy...
humans are complicated rats,
life is a maze,
our success is our functionablility
sooooooo he figures what is wrong is that exposure to too much bad news is a bad thing because you can't make it through the maze in your usual time.
Bad rats reading ratdot.... ratdot rats don't function well
Of course... it doesn't matter that there are 100,000 dead rats from the hot water heater tipping over,
some scientists are putting the rats over on the other side of the room back in cages because the rats are downloading maps of the maze through tech they learned about on ratdot,
the scientist that just got "elected" to lead the lab makes alot of money making coats out of rat fur and has managed to get a bunch of his rats to go over to another part of the cage and kill thousands of another scientists rats,
some other scientists on the other side of the room are tearing apart the maze because the lab has run out of materials to live off of,
some of the spotted rats are killing all the grey rats just spontaneously because they are grey
No... as a rat you should not be worried about that... you should be worried about the fact that you are not making it through the maze efficiently... something is wrong with your obsessive interest in the other things happening in the lab.
Nothing is wrong in the rest of the lab... run rat run.
graaaghrrrr....
(pulling hair out and going insane)
after the lawyers... the cogs!!!!!!!!
I agree with much of your post. I did not mean to imply that multitaskig should be avoided, and indeed it is required much of the time.
However I did want to dismiss the idea that multitasking was the only *true* worthwhile use of time. The original parent dismissed single-tasking as a complete waste of time, regardless of focus or depth. This I cannot agree with, and to a certain extent, you do too. You say that if you have the capacity to do multiple things at once you should, but what if you are focused completly on one thing, with no extra capacity? That would not be wasting time either.
Although, in practice that is difficult, if not impossible to acheive.
i.e. Goethe was aware of the details of all major scientific fields in his day, a renaissance man as they were known, same for DaVinci, who actually pushed the boundries of knowledge in most fields. Today, to do groundbreaking work in physics requires a: mandatory 12 years (at least in the U.S.), a bare minimum of 8 more at an institute of higher learning and that is followed up with an apprenticeship program where you work for more experienced scientists for 5 years (or more). This gives us a standard educational model that lasts 25 years from entry to specialty.
As human knowledge increases, and the flood of it into our heads is turned from a trickle to a torrent, we'll be increasingly unable to find it (which is why Google was invented, i suppose, but the problem is larger than just finding things). But as the article points out: focus is a valuable thing. Realizing this can make one spend time and energy on acquiring it. As an aside, multitasking is useful too, but when you actually need to get something done...
00010111 always try everything twice
...sites every few minutes with an RSS aggregator that I set to check them every hour.
I'm a web junky, and RSS reader allows me to feed my need, and have more time for other things.
Stand Fast,
tjg.
Looks like an article well worth reading in its entirety at some point.
.. of bali and australia. no internet, no world, just me, my loved ones, and whatever was out there. wow.
/., my sid belies my addiction, but surely this past month of disconnect won't sway the karma. much.
/. daily, for a whole 30 or so days. i'm not going back to my old ways, anyway. the urge to check the last 30 days worth of articles, and 'catch up', can .. be .. resisted ..
i'm sure, nestled deep in the bowels of
but damn, it felt good to not read
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
... which was published in the October Readers' Digest.
Q: "How many ADD kids does it take to change a lightbulb?"
A: "Let's go ride bikes."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Speaking as a psychology student who has recently taken a few classes in cognitive psyc. Humans are very bad at multi tasking. Alot of research points to this. The majority of these studies examined humans driving and talking on the cell phone at the same time. Let me just say, NEVER do that. Its a good way to die.
.. or top for you linux guys). Your main cognitive energies are then used for talking on the phone. Now this is fine as long as the road is straight and nothing happens. Throw a deer jumping onto the road, or a car ahead of you suddenly swearving into your lane and its over.
Now before you say "What? I can multitask like nobody's business! I can drive and talk on the cell phone no problem!", what you are really doing is relying on automacity. You are so practiced at driving that it takes less room in your cognitive processor (think task manager in xp
Whoo de shite.
;)
I took 4 AP classes in 10th grade, in addition to chemistry at the local community college nights.
I took 6 AP classes and two band classes in 12th grade.
You're nothing special
I have something better: Terminal Ennui . There's cognitive overload, but that's not the real problem. The real problem today is that because of cognitive overload, we're made too objectively aware of the world. The traditional motivation to struggle to become the best at something is basically short-circuited today, as well can instantly see not only many other people doing the same things we're doing, but maybe better. Or, we can all too well see it having *already been done*. Leaving the sensation that there's no point in trying to do much of anything at all. Cognitive overload is just a precursor. Terminal ennui.
You can say "Just push the off button", "relax", "take one step at a time", "turn your phone ringer off", etc. but if you actually do any/all of that, you'll end up getting fired. Your job is probably already on the "to be outsourced" list, and trying to reduce your stress in any of these ways will put you on your PHB's "bad attitude" list.
I like jumping around from thing to thing, many tasks lack a stimulating aspect that keeps my mind sharp on what I am doing, so my mind wanders anyway. By switching between different tasks, I stay more focused on what I am doing at that moment. This is not 100% though, there are times when I become very focused on one item for long periods of time and have great productivity. This seems to be mainly after taking very low doses of Marijuana, but that is another story.
...
Being on the leading edge of the boomer generation I grew up in the 50's. My early childhood was spent hanging with the kids in the nieghborhood. I can remember when the first TV showed up. It was this huge cabinet and a small round screen. There was only one TV station at the time. Through most of my childhood we had only 3 stations and by my teenage years there were a handful more.
Fast forward to the 70's I was taking advantage of the GI bill (thanks to being drafted) and getting a master degree in clinical psychology. I used to wonder why I could drive a car, remember the roads I was on, overlay that with the topography of the city I was in and use that to find alternate routes. This is a practice I still use today. In retrospect I would infer that from the article that I had the ability to multitask.
Fast forward again to the late 80's. I was a firefighter who in the early 80's got interested in computers as a hobby. I ended up at one of the top ten CompSci schools and got my degree at the age of 44.
Being a firefighter I learned not to be stressed because not only is your life on the line but the lives and welfare of your co-workers and the victims of the current crisis depends on you making the right choices. I found this to come fairly easy for me.
Now my present job as a senior programmer I find that doing multiple tasks is not that big of a deal. I've got time for this post because I'm compiling the application I work on and it takes about 20 minutes to run the ant scripts on my machine.
The observation that I'm trying to make is that some people just have a knack at doing many things at once and I'm fortunate to be one of those people. Based on my 58 laps around the sun I would say that most people do not have this ability. I think that this is what the article is trying to get at.
"I Was A Slashdot Zombie"
I'll just take back your paycheck.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
It doesn't stress them in the same way, but it has a definite effect, namely, they react more by reflex and less by thought.
See, the more items of information that come in, the less time you have to think about each one. Granted, a lot of them don't get thought about at all, but even the remainder don't get real thought devoted to them. (I guarantee you that today's kids are not thinking 100 times faster than their grandparents.) So depth of thought disappears.
That's fine in video games, it's probably OK when driving, but in social relationships, politics, science, engineering, and so on, it's a net loss.
What distinguishes humans from other animals isn't our ability to react swiftly, or our ability to pay attention to lots of things at once. It's our ability to think deeply, logically, and carefully about something. The mass of data that we are subjecting ourselves to may make us better informed, but it may do so at a very heavy price.
I went to a high school outside the US. Every day, every student had nine periods (except Wednesdays, when it was just six periods). Extra-curricular was on top of that again, and the standardized tests at the end of high school expected students to reach subject mastery at a level that US students don't achieve till after their first or second year of third level education. "Information overload is my friend"? Ho, ho, ho.
Some people can't do math very well. I happen to suck at spelling. One thing I can do, however, is multitask. For example, I can discuss a problem with my boss while writing this message because my brain works much faster than either my mouth or my fingers. Granted, there are times where 100% of my brain cycles are being used for a particular task (quite often actually -- and usually for something otherwise simple... like say spelling!), but to say that people can't multitask seems like limited thinking to me.
There was a time when people would have thought we'd never need gigabytes of storage because people just aren't smart enough to use all that data. Clearly we haven't evolved since then, but here we are... using gigabytes of data.
A side problem I see in this statement is that we don't define multitasking. When my code is compiling, I'm off working on a document for it. I switch tasks every 20 minutes. Is that multitasking? This gentleman would probably label it Adult ADD, but I should say that it makes me more productive, not less.
Sometimes I just think that having above-average intelligence makes it easy to get prideful -- prideful in a way that makes us say, "If I can't do it, then neither can anyone else."
I'm curious if anyone else views this similarly...
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.ht ml
I skimmed the article. Like most good news articles, the first sentence or two of each paragraph conveys the message, while the rest of the paragraph amplifies that message. Also, like most good news aticles, the important points get mentioned first.
The above paragraph describes what I call a cognitive filtering. It's how I handle multitasking. While it's not as efficient or effective as single-tasking, it does allow me to float in a sea of information.
From a programming perspective, you could probably think about it in terms of pointers or references. From a learning perspective, you can think of it as maybe not knowing the details of a subject, but knowing where to find those details.
I find that I don't need to know the latest death toll from the tsunami. I don't need to know that there was a train wreck in some other city/state/country. I do know where I can find this information. If I want to converse about it, I can reference the location, read the information, and come up to speed quickly.
Does this make me a little less agile? Probably. I find that sometimes I have to look up how to do tasks that others do without thinking. However, if I do those tasks often enough the knowledge becomes experiential as well as academic. I get to use a different part of the brain to remember the information. Once that happens, I can rely on the information to be readily available.
Learning to ride a bike is a good example of this. Using your favorite editor is another good example.
Another aspect of this cognitive filtering is that I'm comfortable with a bit of chaos. I don't feel that I have to control everything in my life. Nor do I feel that all the information in my life has to be consistent. Disorder and inconsistency provide opportunities for learning.
Will I reach reference overload someday? Probably. I'm already planning for that by organizing my references in structured lists. These lists should be (but aren't yet) self-documenting.
Then, all I have to do is the following:
In short, managing information overload is all about turning down the volume. I find that anyone who uses histronics in order to be heard probably has very little of importance to say.
To paraphrase Theodore Sturgeon: 90% of everything is crap.
This is slightly off topic, but there was a line in the article about getting customized news: if all your information is tailored to what you want to know, you may miss that which you don't know you want to know, and should. I often worry about this from reading slashdot too much. (Am I really becoming just a paranoid liberal geek?) The problem that I have is that I can't find news sources that are evenly balanced. All of the news sources seem to be so focused on telling people what they want to hear that you can't find out what you should be hearing. Wether it's conservative vs liberal, Microsoft vs Open Source, this company or that company. Every news source seems to have an agenda and I have to pick my sources based on the least of all evils or read 10 different sources to get the news. It may be lazy, but I shouldn't have to work this hard to get a balanced source of news.
Anyway, anyone else feel this way and have some options?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
A human brain can not multitask because you can only concentrate on one thing at one time. To 'multitask' you must use short-term memory to store (as a pointer) information about another task. You must constantly move tasks in and out of short term memory as you act on them. The disadvantage is people can remember about 7-8 unique items. That is why Bell made phone numbers 7 digits long after lots of research into remembering those numbers. If you have 3 things in your temp-memory you're screwing your working memory by only have 4-5 objects available (though you can start grouping sets of numbers as abstract objects to store more info). By this logic a computer also cannot multitask. That is, a computer only does one thing at one time and everything else is in working memory (RAM). A processor can add, subtract, XOR, and all kinds of cool shit but only one operation can be done at one time the same as a brain. So, if we cannot multi-task then I would argue that neither can a computer. This, however, undermines what, I assume, the discussion had assumed by the meaning of multitasking. If you argue that a computer has the ability to multitask because of a larger temp-memory you must realize that people may also expand their memory by writing something down and allowing it become a literal part of their memory (if through an abstraction). We may also increase our memory through tools such as grouping strategies (acronymes or using your birthdate to remember the number (19)xx.
It kind of makes sense, as our brains are programmed for task switching at an early age with most kids being babysat by the TV and commercials being 30 seconds in length.
:)
That explains why I can focus for long periods of time, and in fact it seems that unlike everyone else, I have a hard time multitasking.
I preferred public television as a child.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Warning people that a task is risky doesn't seem to prevent people from doing it- Exhibit A:smoking. Talking on your cell phone and driving is a good way to kill somebody else and get your ass sued off! Now people MIGHT pay attention to that.
...our new Cognitive overloads!
And all this time, I just thought I had developed adult onset ADD!
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I'm tired of seeing this kind of thing get so much more media attention.
People's lives are and always have been exactly as complex as they can handle -- there was a time that something as simple as washing and drying clothes required years of experience and a small cabinet full of different treatments for different materials and colours, as well as hard work spread over three or four days. A cast iron stove has very few moving parts, but the ability to actually bake a cake in one -- getting and maintaining the right temperature and even heat distribution -- requires harder-to-learn skills than many programming languages, much less simply sending e-mail.
Today, when washing and drying a load of laundry takes only an hour, and you can dial a temperature in digitally for your oven, you have a bit of time free to make a call on your cell phone or read a blog, and will continue to do things like that until once again your life is at its complexity limit.
If education is about retaining "factlets" then sure, class is pointless and you may as well amuse yourself. But, if it's about understanding something in depth or thinking through a question carefully, that takes concentration. The students who "multitask" usually can't do that well -- they can regurgitate but can't solve new problems or write a well-organized essay. And indeed I think the alleged multitasking is an effect not a cause -- not having acquired the discipline to concentrate, they get bored and look for distractions. The really good students not only take notes of what happens, they write down their own reflections, questions, and extensions of the material as they go along. There's a large performance difference, and you really see it as a teacher, between students who *process* what is going on in class in real time and can ask good questions, and students who sort of write things down and hope it all makes sense later. And the former group is not the people balancing their checkbooks or doing homework for another class at the same time.
I did only few things besides reading this article. Nothing usefull and productive, nothing really time taking. I finished reading it now.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
What was I saying... Ooooh Looky, new email....
Hey, that's an interesting pos... Whoa! Anime!
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
Ooooh Looky, new email....
:-(
Damn, it's spam!
Tag lost or not installed.
Unfortunately, even public television is going in the direction of the "blipvert".
When I was a child, Sesame Street had show themes that went on for a week at a time or more. Big Bird looking for Mr. Snuffaluffagus was at least a week, possibly two. While they had a few shorts thrown in to demonstrate colors or numbers or letters, there was a cohesive storyline that joined the entire two weeks together, and you had to be there every day to get the gist of what was going on.
Now? They don't do that anymore apparenty. Children's television now has no long cohesive stories, it's all thirty second schpiels.
Even the commercially mass marketed stuff has gone the same way. The Simpsons used to have one storyline for the entire show. Now, there's three to four different storylines crossing each other simultaneously.
My question is whether or not the programming reflects the culture, or the culture reflects the programming?
The article was too long for me to finish before I lost interest! Talk about an ironically short attention span!
That's not meaningful "multitasking". Try this: compose an original poem with one hand and develop a new HOWTO with your other hand. You can't do it, and no amount of "practise" will improve that. What you are doing is simple motor-skill type of multitasking, and that's not much more complicated than walking, breathing, chewing gum and blinking "all at the same time" is. Composing both a poem and a HOWTO at the same time uses much of the same higher brain functions, and results in your switching back and forth between them, to the detriment of both, due to the overhead of switching. In software, this has been called "concurrent programming".
I always equivocate. Well, almost always.
I'm sure it's been said but I'll try to say it better and/or shorter ;)
People multitask because it is expected, encouraged, and considered vital, yet cognitive scientist David Meyer reports that truly effective multitasking is beyond people's capabilities.
The best multi-tasking is... human-folk getting computer(s) to perform long-duration tasks, particularly where other computing is concerned. Damn 'puters like to "make-work" if you know what I mean...
I'd agree that humans should do one thing at one time, but until technology catches-up, there are a lot of propellers to wind.
Regards, Lex
It's not just that it's 'beyond people's cognitive capacities.' Concentration has inertia. The more time you are able to spend concentrated and focused on one task, the better your concentration is likely to be. 'Multi-tasking' means that most people will not give tasks the time or attention they really deserve.
Not yet, but I think eventually it might not be beyond our capabilities, just like learning how to produce heat from wood, and now from splitting atoms.
But should we want to multitask? We're overworked enough as it is, and few people take the time to appreciate art, or devote true attention to their loved ones.
Why the hell would we want to adapt to a hellish, overbusy world? Why not simplify our lives, rather than trying to add complexity?
I don't want the human brain to become bloatware. It should be free.
I just turn all my senses off for 6 hour rest or 15 minute nap ... and ... the overload disappears!
I'll start to worry only after SuicideTalk.com starts to advertize on Slashdot
"Never give up, never surrender!"
You can't do it, and no amount of "practise" will improve that
That's a positive attitude...
What you are doing is simple motor-skill type of multitasking
Um. That really depends on _what_ I'm writing, now, doesn't it, in effect (though I haven't tried poetry and a HOWTO specifically) I am attempting to do similar to what you ask. What did you think I meant - Alternating sentences from one text? (I guess my comment could be read that way, it's not what I meant...)
I actually attempt the same thing with typing rather than handwriting, too, but only occasionally, as I don't always have two computers handy, and the X Window System has (or seems to have, haven't really investigated the issue deeply) a "there can be only one" idea of input focus.
results in your switching back and forth between them, to the detriment of both, due to the overhead of switching
I freely acknowledged I was merely switching back and forth (that's what "timeslicing" meant!) - my goal is to drastically reduce the overhead of switching through practice and make the process second nature. Yes, that means aping a timeslicing computer processor.
In software, this has been called "concurrent programming".
Um no, switching rapidly to give the illusion of multitasking is called timeslicing. concurrent programming would be writing a program that is composed of (interacting) concurrently running processes at runtime, perhaps to run on a truly parallel system (like the ones I manage at work), or to run on a timesliced system emulating a truly parallel system.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
I actually attempt the same thing with typing... but...
[And it also usually means typing one-handed on keyboards designed for two hands, which also sucks, for obvious reasons]
Choice of masters is not freedom.
He reads TFA, that means he should get an offtopic or redundant mod. Sheesh, some people never get it right!
...all the way back in the 60's!
a n: Yes, Robin....but with my Bat...Inflato Arms..
...logical...answer.
From scripts of totally fictitious episodes of Batman & Star Trek (respectively)
Batman: I....can almost....reach...my...toolbelt.
Robin: HolyAmputeeBatman!You'rearmshavebeencutoff!
Batm
Robin: You'rerightBatman!Itotallyforgotaboutthat.
Kirk: Spock....we've lost....enough...red shirts...in one day. Should....we break.... for...a...commerical?
Spock: It would seem to be the logical choice, given the lack of subjects for the cameras to focus on.
Kirk: As usual Spock...a very,
and /. is different from TV how?
and games are different from TV how?
we are all individuals, I choose to listen to my own music; and that is sweet sweet Britny. Opps I did it again. NOT!
http://www.qotsa.com/
It is almost as if you are addicted to performing a task (browsing the internet) and the performing of the task becomes the goal, instead of working towards, something at the end.
You mean like when I push this lever, I get a happy jolt to my pleasure center, right?
Hey -- food pellet!
Again, again!
-kgj
-kgj