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."

Comments

Cooperative vs. Preemptive

[harlows_monkeys]

Quote from the article:

Marois found evidence of a "response selection bottleneck" that occurs when the brain is forced to respond to several stimuli at once.

I think the key here is forced. When I'm solving a problem or trying to learn something, I find that I am more effective if, after each noticeable success in my effort, I take a little break and do something else, such as read a Slashdot story, while my brain thinks about what I just learned or did. I'm much less effective if I have to work straight through on a long problem or learning task.

In other words, I multitask fine if I've picked N tasks, that I can switch among freely, whenever I want to switch. However, if the tasks are forced upon me, or I have to switch on a schedule or in response to interrupts, such as phone calls, then productivity goes down.

Seems real enough to me

[fyngyrz]

Kind of sad if you really didn't get it... I hope that was just "more joke."

I just wrote something on the superiority of written matter over video because written matter has numerous advantages that relate to focus and reflection. I value these things. Right at that time, I ran into this very article (I mean the one TFS refers to), I found it a horrifying thing to read — like reading someone's report of losing their own mind.

Since I wrote it up, I've been paying attention to how others pay attention, and I've seen a few things that signify, at least to me, that the problem is widespread.

For instance, I introduced our youngest boy (he's in his twenties) to some music that is in his line of interest (he plays bass, this musician I was showing him is a fabulous bassist) and he listened for, oh, maybe 15 seconds before he began to talk about music, which segued quickly into other areas. I didn't answer him; he just took off on his own.

Before the piece had finished playing, he was completely off on something else, and he had no idea what I was talking about afterwards when I asked him direct questions about the bass techniques demonstrated in the cut.

It was disheartening, to say the least.

Re:The benefits of ADD

[DrLang21]

The whole post is a joke. I have ADD, and I'm terrible at multi-tasking. I used to think I was good at it and to the casual observer, I probably appear to be good at it. But I have realized that the less I multitask, the more I actually get done. I came to this realization when I noticed that I couldn't remember a damn thing I read when there is any fair amount of background noise.