Slashdot Mirror
Hooked On Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price
Zecheus writes "In the New York Times: 'Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls, and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.'"
We've conditioned ourselves to stop doing almost everything in order to answer a phonecall. Even if we have no idea who's calling, we are prepared to interrupt most activities and (unforgivably) most people in order to speak to a little voice who almost certainly only called because they want something.
I say, let them wait. If it's important they can leave a message - although there's nothing that a normal person can tell us that can't bear being delayed for an hour or two. If they are prepared to do some work themselves, they can TEXT you, instead.
Exactly.
The problem isn't the technology itself, it is our reaction to it.
We've built some kind of always-on, instant gratification communication system. Folks expect to be able to instantly communicate with basically anyone about basically anything at basically any time.
I get bombarded all day long with phone calls, instant messages, emails, whatever. Many of these are just useless status updates or questions that they could have answered themselves with about 30 seconds of thought... But the impulse is to reach out and touch someone.
And my impulse is to stop whatever I'm doing and respond to the phone call/text message/IM/email/whatever.
It is horribly distracting, but I can't really blame anyone but myself.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
And what proof do you have to back up the last claim? Show me a car that can win the Indy 500 and is the most fuel efficient of all cars. Your statement is just words without testing it to prove it is valid.
There is no false dichotomy that you can only be good at one or the other, and neither one comes naturally
But there is research suggesting that you can't be good at multitasking, or rather very few people actually are. Link. Even though talking on the phone and driving isn't necessarily what this article is talking about, I think it does fall into your classification of "boring things".
It would be interesting to see some research actually showing whether you can improve your multitasking skills.
The two main studies highlighted in the article both suffer from a sort of self-selection bias: the people in the "heavy-multitasking" group(s) are there because of a chosen lifestyle. Perhaps the reason they multitask so much in everyday life is *because* they can't filter out information as well as the average person?
They can't help but be constantly distracted, so they suffer the downsides of multitasking whether they use technology or not. Deliberate multitasking might actually represent a coping mechanism for them, saturating their awareness with tasks and information sources that are at least somewhat productive, thus leaving no room for truly random distractions. Or perhaps priding themselves on their "multitasking skills" is just a way to paper over their inherent weakness and re-frame it as a positive attribute?
Caller ID + voice mail means I can choose which calls to take at any time.
Cell phone profiles mean I can also choose which types of communication actually alert me and which ones are silent until I decide to check my phone.
Not having a Crackberry means that I check e-mail at a time of my choosing.
The "Later" button on my cell phone means that I can postpone reading that text until I have the time and/or inclination to do so.
Not having a smart phone means that I can be away from the internet and all that it distracts.
Not being logged onto a chat program means that I again have control over how people contact me.
It seems a lot of the problems being described are self-inflicted by our fascination with technology and being connected. It's a conscious decision to disconnect at my convenience and then to stick with it. Being 'always on' is the default state for so many people that they have no concept of not immediately picking up a call, answering a text, seeing an e-mail or doing any of the other things that distract from the task at hand. Multi-tasking is not easy nor do you get the same results as when you're concentrating on a single task unless it's all fluff.
Do you play chess in a room full of annoying co-workers who don't get the middle bit (the electric signals and cables) about how telephones work? Or with a toddler whose main hobby is using you as a tackle dummy? Or a spouse who sees any moment of silence as an aural blank canvas just begging to be worked upon?
Because if you don't it's going to be fuck all use helping you focus in the real world.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The recurring PBS special "all things digital" had a segment on MIT and Stanford students who thought they were "so smart" because they could multi-task digital devices all the time. The PBS show reported an earlier version of the Stanford study showing these students were performing worse than their less-taxed associates. I am guessing that self-perception doesnt always match reality.
For those too lazy to read the parent's links: anecdotes, personal experience, a priori reasoning, and asking for experiments. In the actual article, you'll find references to actual scientific studies on the subject already done. One of the cool things about science is that it often comes across counter-intuitive results, as seems to have been the case here; maybe you're having trouble accepting their conclusions, or you didn't notice, or you have other evidence (real, this time) you'd care to share with us. The article states that most people aren't good at multi-tasking, only 3% are considered "super-taskers". Maybe you're one of them. Congratulations. But just because that doesn't jive with your personal experience doesn't justify responding to a call for evidence with:
a) poor-form arguments (it's also poor form to spew opinions without backup in the first place [woah, citation needed!]), and
b) anecdotal evidence as if it were the evidence being requested