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Multitasking Considered Detrimental
djvaselaar sends along an article from The New Atlantis that summarizes recent research indicating that multitasking may be detrimental to work and learning. It begins, "In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: 'There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.' To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one's time; it was a mark of intelligence... E-mails pouring in, cell phones ringing, televisions blaring, podcasts streaming--all this may become background noise, like the 'din of a foundry or factory' that [William] James observed workers could scarcely avoid at first, but which eventually became just another part of their daily routine. For the younger generation of multitaskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life. And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being."
that many of my friends, and sometimes even myself, find it uncomfortable in genuinely quiet settings. While it is a useful skill to be able to keep track of more than one or two things at a time, it seems almost habit-forming. A good friend of mine seems to basically invent things to do so that he doesn't ever get "stuck" with one task at a time, which he says is boring.
The most annoying thing I can think of is when I'm at my job or in labs at school, and people come at me with a bunch of different requests, all expecting me to drop everything and get it done 'like now!'. Yes, I can manage several things at once, but sometimes properly managing things means doing them one at a time, carefully. Providing it's not a pressing issue, I wish people would be okay with the answer 'I'm just finishing up my current task, I will get to the next one as soon as I'm done'.
You don't have the right to make that decision for me. If you're on the phone in your car while you're all alone 4-wheeling in the woods that's one thing. But if you're in the car right behind me, that's another. Your decision about sacrificing safety for a cell phone conversation is also about my safety too. That kind of decision cannot be made by an individual.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
1) Just because you perform both tasks worse, doesn't mean it's less efficient.
Right. What's the goal? Getting more work done, or getting a raise? If the boss values crap work as long as you can work on 5 crap things at a time, then that's what you do. You get your raise more efficiently. When the boss wants you to do one thing only, that's what you'll be told to do. It's his capital that's invested in the business, and there's no reason why you should help him use it more wisely.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
For those that don't get it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful
I doubt either you or the wife are getting much productive work done at home having to take care of a 5 year old. One of you needs to go back into the office.
It can be applied to most of us, companies should be aware of that. Cubicles and open offices are default nowadays, so people can constantly drop by and ask things. Instant messaging and e-mail only make it worse.
When I'm at work programming, I want to do just that. When my manager asks me about the state of things, I lose my concentration, have to write down some notes about what I was working on, answer his question, read my notes and try to regain my concentration. Sometimes it takes fifteen minutes or more to regain my concentration, most of the time I completely lose important work because I lost the idea or can't make sense of the halfway finished code I just wrote. A simple question (from his perspective) costs fifteen minutes or more of my time and could lead to ugly unmaintainable code.
When companies just start to realise that most people can't multitask and change their corporate culture accordingly, overall productivity will increase.
So you've got a short attention span. Do you really think that makes you as efficient as someone who has trained their mind to be focused?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Those handsfree phone devices are still a distraction and impact the attention you pay to the primary activity on hand: driving.
News at 11.
People seem to think that geniuses are simply more intelligent than the rest of us, I hear talk of IQs of 200, 250 etc. Which is utter bullshit, there aren't enough people on the planet for that, never mind the validity of IQ tests. What you really see when you take a look at the life of a genius is damned near monomania. The drive, ability and desire to focus on a single thing for years, decades, to the exclusion of almost everything else. To the point that they finally see "the truth" or at least, closer to the truth than the rest of us who are more distracted by daily life.
Not to say that geniuses aren't spectacularly talented people, obviously they are, but what really makes the difference is focus.
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I debated using that example because I knew some jackass would start crying about the safety aspect rather than what is pertinent to the argument. I am not advocating talking on the phone in a car, I am using it as an efficency example, since they used it.
However, if you are unable to set emotion aside and evaluate it objectively then let's go for walking and talking on your phone. Again, you will find that one interferes with the other, you'll probably walk slower and such as you are thinking about your conversation as well as where you are going, you may have to stop to dial or press keys in response to auto prompts and such. That doesn't mean that it is going to be more efficient to get to where you are going, then pull out your phone and make your call. Despite both tasks suffering, there is still an overall gain.
That is the point here. I'm not talking about safety, that's a separate issue.
Multi-tasking is efficient when used appropriately.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Short attention spans are quite common, especially among programmers - interruptions are the norm, and should be dealt with in a calm manner.
Myself, I make the notes first, and if interrupted continue as if I was a ghost dog in the city.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Well said.
I have never understood the people who claim to multi-task, because I've often observed that when they do multi-task, do so rather poorly, and perform poorly at all the tasks that they have to do. Why would you simply not take the time to focus on each one, and get it out of the way?
If I'm doing something, my girlfriend often tries to interrupt me, but for the most part, I just tune everything else out and do the one thing that I want. She finds it hard to understand, but it's just the way I've been raised (and wired). Growing up, distractions were a strict no-no, and I'm quite thankful for that. If I'm at work, I turn IMs and emails off (the Blackberry remains turned on, though, just in case).
The end result is that I find that it takes me a lot less time to do something than the people who claim that they can only multi-task. I have friends who are so much more better and so much more focussed at doing things, and the one thing that I can tell you is that they are all a lot more efficient at getting things done than me.
Likewise, my ADD friends claim to be able to multi-task, but do a VERY poor job of actually doing it. Sure, you do ten things at the same time, but I could have done 20 things better, faster and more efficiently by focusing separately than you did ten without any focus or singular goal.
Just my two cents.
Your belittling of the GP's post, and subsequent straw man argument, are completely unconvincing. The goal of the rules of the road are already such that if everybody followed them 100% of the time, the only accidents would be mechanical. Clearly, this isn't the case because neither drivers nor legislators are perfect and, in fact, in many cases are completely incompetent, but the roads are nonetheless safer with the rules we currently have than they would be without any rules at all.
Your example of simply having no 2 cars being on the same road at the same time example is especially wrong. Consider the "2 second following distance" rule. Many people don't follow it, but if they did (and paid attention to the road), there would be very few fender benders. Here is where the pay attention to the road part comes in. The current laws don't matter at all if people aren't paying attention to the road, and this is why people shouldn't be allowed to use cell phones in cars. Talking/texting on a phone has been shown to reduce the attention of the driver to the road. If the law doesn't deal with people paying attention to the road, then there will be no safety on the roads at all, since all of the other laws depend so heavily on that one simply concept.
Here is my complete speculative analysis on multi-tasking.
Just take a look at human evolution. Do you think that being "extremely focused" is a really good survival trait? Being able to do more than "one thing" at a time would seem to be a much more advantageous, in the greater scheme of things, than being able to focus at the detriment of other things. Human beings are meant to multi-task. Staying alert for potential predators while gathering food seems like a top notch trait to carry on. Human beings are at the top of the totem pole not because we are physically superior, but because we are mentally superior. Our ability to out think more physically capable predators is not only because we are smart, but also because we are cognsaint of more than one thing going on at a time, and are better able to process that information.
It seems more likely that the "genius" trait, while desirable for geek credit, is really not a trait that evolution seems to favor.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
Y'know, things like driving on the wrong side of the road, that kind of thing.
If something's demonstrably unsafe, then you put in laws, and then the people who persist lose their license.
You can tell the difference between a document that's been rewritten and polished, verses something that looks like a hungover homage to Jack Kerouac written in Perl, on a cloudy day, after a bad breakup.
Best wishes with the son.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Detrimental but we do it anyways... alcohol, tobacco, television, fighting, preservatives, pets we're allergic to, driving old, inefficient cars... name one thing you do in a day that doesn't involve putting something into your body or putting it back out that is completely necessary.
Even if we get two things done less efficiently than if we did each of those things separately, we're still getting two things done at the same time. This seems perfectly fine for two jobs that don't have to be done perfectly or rapidly.
It doesn't matter anyhow, even if it is bad for us it's still human nature to push the limits of our thinking, even if it's regularly over what we can do.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Yes, this is why we like to use multiprocessing. Cavemen didn't hang out alone so much. If they did, they became a snack for something with bigger teeth. (All debates over human/dino coexistence aside, there's lots of other predators out there which were dramatically more numerous during the stone age.) You had separate cavemen to watch the fire, cook the food, watch for bad guys, et cetera. This permitted the cavemen to operate in single tasking mode, in which they are more efficient due to the lack of context switches. In computing we have multiprocessing, coprocessing, and peripherals to allow us to do the same kind of thing.
In other words, the article is 100% correct, single-tasking is more efficient. On the other hand, some tasks are not possible without multitasking and pretty much all tasks involve multitasking to one extent or another. Reading is a good counterexample, but the more complex a task is, the more likely you're going to have to context switch as there will be various interrelated tasks which all require your personal attention.
By the way, driving a car is NOT multitasking. It's a single complex activity. When you have attained a certain level of mastery you're no longer thinking about turning the steering wheel, or steeping on the clutch pedal - you just think "I'm going to go over there" or "I need to be in a lower gear" and it just sort of happens. This is because the brain is not a computer! Every neural cell is engaged in processing whether it's in your brain, or in your ass. It just doesn't matter. This is why martial arts (or other physical) training is so valid and useful - you actually train your body to perform the motions. When you decide to go through them, it just sort of happens for you, leaving you time to observe the situation and make fine adjustments.
If you really are thinking "Okay, now I'm going to move my foot from the brake pedal to the gas pedal, while at the same time I'm going to turn the wheel to the right, and I'm going to depress the clutch pedal and push this lever over there" then you are NOT DOING IT RIGHT. In fact, odds are you're not concentrating on driving! Pay attention to the road, and learn to tell what's going on with the vehicle by feel, sound, smell... And you won't have to think about the mechanics of driving any more and you can focus on what is important about driving, like watching out for idiots about to do something stupid.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's been decades since I was young. I'm still stupid, however.
(now watch, they'll mod this "insightful")
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest