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More Evidence That Multitasking Reduces Productivity

Posted by Soulskill on from the rub-belly-pat-head dept.

bdking writes "A recent study by a Louisiana State University psychology professor adds more evidence to the argument that the human brain is incapable of performing numerous tasks without memory and productivity loss. 'In four separate experiments, both local second-graders and LSU psychology students were shown words on a computer screen and instructed to remember them in the correct sequence. As the participants read the words, they also sometimes heard unrelated words in the headphones all were wearing. Adults in the LSU study showed a word recall performance drop of 10% on average, while the second-graders’ performance diminished by up to 30% on average.'"

133 comments

  1. noshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's also been shown that subject have more difficult counting when someone yells random numbers at them.

    1. Re:noshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      ...but ok, we'll call it "interesting", and store this away for the next time we have two jobs to do that require 100% performance, like building that space rocket and the brain surgery that we've been putting off.

    2. Re:noshit by kulnor · · Score: 1

      Yup but that guy lost his job, been replaced by Facebook and Twitter

    3. Re:noshit by Yvan256 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hence the expression "it's not rocket surgery".

    4. Re:noshit by tom17 · · Score: 3, Funny

      This thread calls for: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I

  2. Propose addition to the dictionary by Psychotria · · Score: 5, Funny

    I propose that a new word is added to the English dictionary: distraction.

    1. Re:Propose addition to the dictionary by billybob2001 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Good one - or, how about "distraction"? That would be a good one too.

    2. Re:Propose addition to the dictionary by Dewin · · Score: 1

      Were you two saying something? I was suffering from some, umm, what's the word? Let's make one up. Distractions. Yeah, that's it. Oooh shiny!

      --
      Of course nobody reads the FAQ! If people read the FAQ, the Questions wouldn't be so Frequently Asked.
    3. Re:Propose addition to the dictionary by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      I was going to say something similar. While there is definitely a gray area in the middle, I don't think they are the same things. I would call this a lot more "distraction" than "multitasking".

    4. Re:Propose addition to the dictionary by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Of course, this study should not be used as any indication of how well people can drive while having a phone conversation about something completely unrelated.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    5. Re:Propose addition to the dictionary by michelcolman · · Score: 1

      That's exactly what it will be used for, though.

    6. Re:Propose addition to the dictionary by michelcolman · · Score: 2

      This study just shows what happens when you try to perform a study while doing other, unrelated things at the same time.

  3. Here's the thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Would you rather do more things okay or do one thing excellent?

    1. Re:Here's the thing. by obarel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Here's the thing: would you like to do things once and finish them, or keep fixing the mistakes you've made while being distracted?

    2. Re:Here's the thing. by sjames · · Score: 2

      Alas, that's not your choices. You can either do one thing well followed by another in X time or you can do both at once poorly in 1.1X time (and then do them again later because they needed to be done well).

    3. Re:Here's the thing. by rgbatduke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except that is not what they tested, is it? They tested people on whether or not they could work efficiently if they are distracted, not whether or not multitasking improves or doesn't improve efficiency.

      The silly thing is that we actually know quite a lot about task organization for efficient multitasking. It is a key component of task scheduling on any computer. Fine grained multitasking -- especially on a CPU that has a large latency component for switching tasks, is known as "thrashing", and is also known to degrade performance substantially, and whacking a computer with a steady stream of pointless interrupts so that it is always thrashing slows it down.

      At the same time, executing tasks with the right granularity and with the right kinds of latency and parallelism can speed things up quite a lot compared to doing tasks one at a time. This, too, is true in life as much as it is in computers. Anybody who cooks knows that you cannot generally make a good meal in serial fashion. If you want to serve rice with a stir fry and end up with dessert in a timely manner, you have to be cooking the rice, chilling the dessert, and chopping up and frying the main course all "at the same time", with layered overlaps in the attention you pay to the different tasks. The tasks are all related and a skilled cook can juggle quite a few of them without cognitive or operational overload and finish a meal far faster than anyone would ever finish it cooking one thing at a time (to a soggy, cold, unproductive finish).

      Most normal humans multitask all the time. I listen to music and work while wiggling my feet to maintain circulation. I hop from answering email to posting silly things like this reply to doing work on task A to doing work on task B to doing work on task C -- so much the more so when my tasks are all different, all use the computer (or a number of computers) and take different amounts of time (attended or unattended) to move on to the next stage of completion. Yes, I can be overloaded, I can thrash in my normal work if overloaded so little gets done, but that is entirely different from asking if I can work when somebody is randomly blasting uncorrelated and meaningless distractions into my workspace.

      rgb

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    4. Re:Here's the thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... you cannot generally make a good meal in serial fashion ...

      No, no, no. That is scheduling, without which humans would could not build a civilisation or drive a car. There is a fine line between scheduling and multi-tasking and scheduling. Scheduling involves slicing parallel activities into a serial sequence. Whereas multi-tasking is a more a 'drop everything, do this' paradigm. What is the difference? Usually splitting the same linguistic/numeric activities across similar stimuli: eg. Reading and watching television.

      ... somebody is randomly blasting uncorrelated and meaningless distractions ...

      What makes one a distraction and the other multi-tasking? You admit that multi-tasking leads to overloading. We all do multi-tasking to get through the day. Driving a car and listening to the radio/passenger is multi-tasking. We all need multi-tasking to keep our minds active. But 'multi-tasker' people take on identical activities causing their 'change inattention' to skyrocket. Because they've missed the stimuli, they don't know how incompetent their response is. Worse, those 'multi-tasker' people think they are performing above average.

    5. Re:Here's the thing. by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Wow, this is so far off the mark that I'm amazed you got upvoted at all. It's especially clear that you have no background in psychology, and your computer metaphor is particularly gross and is typical of when a computer scientist makes fanciful speculations on the nature of human cognition...

      First of all, the claim was not that it is impossible to "multitask" in the ways you mention. Let me preface by saying this gets a little more complex with well-rehearsed tasks that have acquired some level of automaticity to them.

      Furthermore,

      Except that is not what they tested, is it? They tested people on whether or not they could work efficiently if they are distracted, not whether or not multitasking improves or doesn't improve efficiency.

      When it comes to humans, this is essentially the same thing, as attentional focus switches between tasks. Even though the brain is massively parallel, much of human cognition, functionally speaking, works serially. I'm sure you've noticed that the more you attend to the road while driving the less you can follow the music that is playing, and vice versa. Although the nature of attention or what is even the best way to define "attention" is somewhat up in the air, quite generally the more you switch between tasks and the more attentional resources are required, the more you will suffer in performance of all the tasks. It's cute that some of the comments here on slashdot basically amount to, "well, these guys are wrong, just look at what you do in the kitchen!" as if that addresses anything the psychologists are saying. Do you really think psychologists are claiming you can't fart and chew bubble gum at the same time? Hell, let's use that cooking example--how much do you want to bet that the busier a restaurant is (keep the number of employees constant), the rate of errors increases drastically? Yeah, exactly.

      Most interesting of all is why slashdot is posting this story, since this sort of thing pretty established in psychological science and many experimental methodologies and techniques regarding attention do just this sort of thing, although maybe not across the same sensory modalities.

    6. Re:Here's the thing. by petsounds · · Score: 1

      I'm sure you've noticed that the more you attend to the road while driving the less you can follow the music that is playing, and vice versa.

      No. Quite the opposite, in my case. Music provides a rhythm which focuses my brain, and this is true whether I'm driving or involved in another task.

      However, if someone is talking to me in the car, or I'm trying to listen to a talk radio show, I have trouble focusing on both. Perhaps that is different for others.

    7. Re:Here's the thing. by raymorris · · Score: 2

      It's not the sa,e thing at all. They showed that doing a task while also being distracted by a NON-task reduced the effectiveness of the one and only task. That's not multi-tasking. A better test would have been to ask the subjects to remember what was shown and what was heard, to actually multi-task. Then count as the score any word remembered - whether the word was shown or heard. They failed by crediting only the performance on task #1. To use a real world multi-tasking example, suppose you are sorting email as pages load for a report you are researching. The syudu counts how many emails you sort. Sue, you'll sort fewer emails if you're multi-tasking, but you'll also complete the report at the same time! Ignoring the fact that TWO tasks were competed rather than just one makes the study worthless.

    8. Re:Here's the thing. by Lotana · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In the corporate world: Just Ship It and send the invoice!

      Consistent observation from my experience: There is always time to fix something when things go wrong, but never enough time to do things properly from the beginning.

    9. Re:Here's the thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just because you like to be distracted by "multitasking" doesn't mean it is more efficient. Just because you think computers are cool and they like to multitask, doesn't mean it's better for humans. Just because some simple tasks (cooking) can (barely) be classified as multitasking doesn't mean you should be constantly multitasking.

      I have a guy I work with who has ADD. He fucks up my world so bad with his interruptions when I'm trying to work and his inability to get ONE FUCKING project done EVER.

      So yeah, I'm a little against the multitasking is good for you argument.

    10. Re:Here's the thing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't even drive and text at the same time... and both are a simple well known routine.

    11. Re:Here's the thing. by daem0n1x · · Score: 1

      You're talking about apples and oranges. Cooking is definitely a multitasking activity, but all the tasks require very low concentration, so it works. And a big kitchen normally has several specialised workstations where one guy is doing the same thing the whole day, like there's one grill and the same guy does all the grilling.

      Also, listening to music and tapping your feet has nothing to do with multitasking. These activities are sent to the background and can perfectly happen while you're focusing on a specific task. Having to lose focus all the time because of telephone calls is completely different and is a serious productivity killer.

      Being constantly distracted when you're doing something that requires concentration, like programming or writing reports is simply horrible. Unfortunately, in my country the corporate culture is that everybody must be juggling several unrelated tasks and be interrupted throughout the whole day. Productivity sucks big time, people become tired and depressed. After some time working like this, people can't pay attention to anything or finish a task. Errors accumulate.

      Unfortunately, to a Portuguese manager, a busy and noisy office where people work unpaid extra hours every day is a sign of a good work. It's precisely the opposite.

      I've been trying to shield myself from this madness, but I confess I'm already seriously affected. But there's worse. I've been doing some projects with a partner which is a "consulting company". I know how these companies work. They squeeze every little bit of work they can from their employees. All the guys from that company I've been working with live in permanent stress. Each of them is assigned several simultaneous projects. They spend the whole day on Windows Messenger juggling multiple conversations while answering calls on their mobile at the same time. They can't focus on a single task for more than a few minutes. They work very long (unpaid) hours and weekends, to produce work which is never finished and doesn't work properly. How companies like these survive is a mystery to me.

    12. Re:Here's the thing. by rgbatduke · · Score: 1

      Also, listening to music and tapping your feet has nothing to do with multitasking. These activities are sent to the background and can perfectly happen while you're focusing on a specific task. Having to lose focus all the time because of telephone calls is completely different and is a serious productivity killer.

      Fair enough. However, the study was also apples and oranges -- that was my primary point. It measured the degradation in utility executing a single primary task without allowing for the utility of the interrupting task, or for the value of opportunity cost time. You may find it more pleasurable and less crazy-making to work on just one task to the exclusion of others, but your employer may find far greater utility in your employment by having you answer the phone on an interrupt-driven basis (that is, when it rings) to handle whatever problem associated with the call and work on longer term but less urgent project in between. The degradation in performance in that task may not matter to them as long as they don't have to hire another person to largely sit idle and "just" answer the phone, especially if they'd have to hire somebody with more or less your skillset to do the answering (e.g. providing deep support for some technical product).

      If they'd measured the actual degradation in the value of the total of a person's work-related activities, that would have been very useful, especially if they'd done so in a way that could actually be rescaled and used to do quantitative optimization. But measuring the degradation in primary task execution subject to random irrelevant "noise", especially on an unrealistically short time granularity, is both less useful and verifying a proposition that nobody would have doubted anyway. Yes, if you slap somebody in the face or give them an electrical shock according to some randomized schedule with a mean time between events that is order of a minute or two, you will interfere with their productivity (and driven them quietly crazy), but who cares? If you force them to switch complex tasks every forty seconds, I'm certain that for most people it will degrade their productivity on both tasks compared to doing them without the switch (although people are quite variable and there may be people that can manage this for at least certain classes of task especially with practice) but how much their productivity degrades at least might be relevant, especially if you explore the task degradation quantitatively as a function of the switch interval and across a decent population (to have a decent chance of sampling outliers who do much better or much worse).

      The latter's the rub. My wife (a physician) cannot work with information with music playing -- too distracting. I can and often do. My wife can juggle certain sets of "simultaneous" tasks -- tasks she switches to and from on demand -- while others drive her crazy. I do much better at general multitasking and usually have a much broader set of things I'm working on at any given time and can switch between them fairly easily at reasonable granularity. For example, I'm writing this now, but will be clearing email in a minute or two (and was clearing email before getting the message announcing this reply to my slashdot comment) and am in the middle of at least a dozen project getting slices of my time as opportunity and need dictate. Different people have very different tolerances and abilities in this regard, even for "random, annoying" interrupt-driven subtasks like letting the dog out or answering the phone or working someplace where people are hustling and bustling all around you. I'm not at all certain that even publishing an average degradation on memory or completion or error rate is useful -- the distribution itself might be, because it might be multimodal or have long tails or otherwise not be classically "normal" so that the mean has some relevant meaning.

      The key is to know your OWN abilities and inclinations in this regard, and to

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    13. Re:Here's the thing. by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      This is important. Also, language is processed through a single neurological center which links various abstract concepts together (such as geometry and coloring). This has less to do with multi-tasking, and language interpretation would have a large impact; although other spatial tasks may become difficult when done in tandem with abstract or logical tasks, some combinations would work well. An array of related spatial tasks, for example, would all be easy because they're context-related; but unrelated things that need analysis in relation to other unrelated things are going to cause a mess.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
  4. Lefties by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Lefties are known to be better at multitasking, so I'm wondering how many of these students were lefty. TFA doesn't mention this information.

    1. Re:Lefties by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      folk "wisdom" ? on my slashdot ?

      gtfo !

    2. Re:Lefties by Pete+Venkman · · Score: 1

      Just like how you didn't mention where you got the impression that lefties were better at multitasking?

    3. Re:Lefties by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Because he/she is a lefty and he/she would like to think they were better at something then the righties. Typical leftist thinking :-D

    4. Re:Lefties by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't see how suffering from a mental condition makes you better at multitasking.

    5. Re:Lefties by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      Good old slashdot, always bringing politics into it.

    6. Re:Lefties by Fuzzums · · Score: 1

      I think you're missing the point here.
      AC is actually saying Linux rules and Microsoft sucks and Apple is for hipsters.

      --
      Privacy is terrorism.
  5. I was just reading about this! by dskoll · · Score: 2

    I was reading about this in a couple of other tabs when... dang... lost my train of thought...

  6. High cost of open plan by vlm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Look at the high cost of loud open plan cube farms... imagine being able to lower your salary costs by 10% to 30% by productivity increases, merely by providing a more humane working environment.

    Isn't it odd that you never hear people complaining, "I'm trying to concentrate here, so make a bunch of noise, OK?"

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    1. Re:High cost of open plan by samazon · · Score: 2

      Right? When I'm not busy posting on /. or using gchat, I can't get any work done due to the people wandering through my office area! I could make six times the posts here if people would just bugger off!

      --
      I have the hiccups.
    2. Re:High cost of open plan by Kjella · · Score: 1

      That would be true if everything you did at work was individual tests. That small banter tends to help coordination, I know more about what coworkers are doing or not doing, what they're making progress on, what they're stuck on and if we're on the same page with regards to what we're creating. I'm not so sure the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, but it's not that easy. Then again I'm pretty good at mentally blocking it as much as I need to.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    3. Re:High cost of open plan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Isn't it odd that you never hear people complaining, "I'm trying to concentrate here, so make a bunch of noise, OK?"

      Von Neumann did, actually.

      Pissed the hell out of Einstein when he'd play his phonograph loud as hell down at Princeton.

    4. Re:High cost of open plan by CrypticKev · · Score: 2

      DeMaro & Lister looked at the impact of open plan vs closed offices on productivity waaay back in 1987 in the first edition of "Peopleware". Alas senior management and the beancounters still seem to just look at the capital cost & seem to think partitions are cheaper. I guess they are when the company decides to downsize the cubes to squeeze more sheep into the farm.

    5. Re:High cost of open plan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "That small banter tends to help coordination" : speak for yourself.

      That statement is so typical of many people who find they can work with lots of noise. For some reason they fail to understand that not everyone is that way, and ANY noise causes a HUGE productivity hit.

      There are times when you need the kind of environment you describe : if you are using Agile practices then you'll have those times, but forcing people to work like that all the time means you don't get the best, not even close to it, out of many, many people. Cube farms and open plan offices are a completely false economy for a significant fraction of the employee demographic.

      I also find it amusing that in every place I have worked the people responsible for implementing cube farms have a private office with a door.

    6. Re:High cost of open plan by vlm · · Score: 1

      The problem is in decades in the biz I've never worked with people where 99% of the "small banter" isn't non-work-related:

      I know more about what coworkers are doing or not doing,

      My cube neighbor's new girlfriend, this guy's landscaping project, new home-moaner's immense list of project (who the hell takes all the lightbulbs outta the house when they move out? Like WTF? These were old fashioned bulbs when the house was being shown not expensive LEDs)

      what they're making progress on

      Mostly alcoholism. Dude we're going to the bar after work. Oh man I was out till 2am last night I'm so hung over. Also see home-moaner-ship problems above.

      what they're stuck on

      Plenty of whining about ex's and how the ex is screwing them up / over, also see home-moaner 1st world tragedies (oh noes, the bedroom is the wrong shade of beige, must repaint!).

      Also stuck on, as in addicted to a negative activity, we've got endless TV watching and pro sports, both of which bore me.

      and if we're on the same page with regards to what we're creating.

      And so and so is pregnant and I'm sure you'd never guess but my kids are cute and here's the crayon drawing they made as proof ...

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    7. Re:High cost of open plan by metaforest · · Score: 1

      Look at the high cost of loud open plan cube farms... imagine being able to lower your salary costs by 10% to 30% by productivity increases, merely by providing a more humane working environment.

      Isn't it odd that you never hear people complaining, "I'm trying to concentrate here, so make a bunch of noise, OK?"

      Funny you mention this.

      Over the years I have gotten a lot of grief from women I know (who generally have never had to work in cube farms) who get very disconcerted at the way I can so completely tune out external distractions while I am read/coding/gaming that I don't even realize that they were speaking.

      This 'laser brain' focus is so complete and automatic, that I literally will fail to process verbal input if I am also trying to read something that is not directly related to the conversation the speaker is attempting to have with me. (ie. discussion of code, a reading, etc)

      While I am not positive, but I think my ability to do this came from working in cube farms for over 20 years. Friends and SOs universally find is disturbing UNLESS they have worked long term in cube farms. Fellow cube farmers learn a social technique called "knocking." By which I mean making a overtly distracting noise before entering someone's personal space.. say literally knocking on the edge of a cube wall, door frame, or wall to announce their presence, rather than walking in and starting to talk anon.

      For my part, to address them, I must stop looking at whatever I was focused on, or I will literally get sucked right back into it, without realizing I have done so.

  7. So by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The older you get the better you off at multi-tasking. I would like to say

  8. science schmience by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In our fast paced startup we need to have open lines of communication to enable agility.

  9. Different topics in school by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even if you focus on one topic for an hour and then switch to another one wastes a lot of time. It would be better to focus on one thing until you've learned it and then move onto the next one.

    But, I'm not sure if school or work could be setup in that fashion.

  10. Coooperative or Preemptive Multitasking? by zhiwenchong · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I find I'm very productive when I focus on short tasks and switch between them (sort of like how co-routines work).

    I'm not productive when I'm doing more than one thing at a time.

    1. Re:Coooperative or Preemptive Multitasking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep.. when CPU(brain) bound, keep working, once waiting(IO) bound, switch to another task.

  11. I hope the experiment doesn't match the summary by fibonacci8 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For what task(s) were the accompanying unrelated words used? If there weren't additional tasks used to measure the retention of the unrelated words, this doesn't test multitasking at all. Not to mention the 10%/30% drops do not represent a loss in productivity if the additional simultaneous tasks result in a net improvement. The summary sounds like a first grader put together the experiment, time to read the article...

    --
    Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
  12. How is this multi-tasking? by Kuukai · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It seems to me that they're comparing two different attention tasks. In multi-tasking, you would be concerned with how the brain juggles two or more things you're [i]trying[/i] to focus on, while this one is talking about how you deal with meaningless distraction. Related, maybe, but how is it multi-tasking?

    --
    Sendou Wave Kick!!
    1. Re:How is this multi-tasking? by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 1

      Because cognitively speaking there is no real difference. Whether the additional information is something that is used in the overall task or not is really quite irrelevant to overall performance. After all, what is "relevant" to the task or not really is just our interpretation (in a sort of way).

    2. Re:How is this multi-tasking? by Kuukai · · Score: 1

      Isn't that an assumption that itself warrants extensive experimentation before you can base another experiment entirely on it? Besides, if the unused information is, say, musical tones instead of words, experience tells me you're probably going to see less of an effect on memory. But by this "all distractions effect you equally" model it should be the same as shouting out numbers while you're doing math, etc., which I have known from 2nd grade not to have the same effect as random background noise.

      --
      Sendou Wave Kick!!
  13. Cue the "But *I'm* SPECIAL!" comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Just like idiots who think it's OK for THEM to use cell phones while driving.

    Get this:

    NO YOU'RE NOT.

    1. Re:Cue the "But *I'm* SPECIAL!" comments by dyingtolive · · Score: 1

      I am special. I have issues with mental hyperactivity. I literally think about two to three things at once, without even trying. If my work performance is any indicator, I can do it at least as well as people who don't.

      I don't use my cell phone while driving though. There's a special place in hell for those people.

      --
      Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
    2. Re:Cue the "But *I'm* SPECIAL!" comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can do it at least as well as people who don't.

      Well that does make you special.

      They have whole buses dedicated to people like you.

    3. Re:Cue the "But *I'm* SPECIAL!" comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "mental hyperactivity"

      thats a fancy term for scatter-brain, usually they think they are doing so much better than everyone else due to how much extra effort they put into mundrane tasks, but in reality, they are too retarded to tell you the time.

    4. Re:Cue the "But *I'm* SPECIAL!" comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you have no problem sucking a dick while taking it up the ass? There's a future for you in film.

    5. Re:Cue the "But *I'm* SPECIAL!" comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      fuck you brad.arnett@notforhire.org
       
      I hope you get your lying bitch ass spammed like a 50 cent ho.

    6. Re:Cue the "But *I'm* SPECIAL!" comments by crystal_rose · · Score: 1

      But *I'm* special! It's perfectly safe for me to drive while replying to your post on my cell pho

  14. But I get bored of one activity. by InvisibleClergy · · Score: 1

    If I'm multitasking, it usually means that one of the activities I am doing is extremely inane. I'd like to see a comparison of how well people focus when they multitask, when the task is extremely inane and for a long period of time. Say, eight hours.

  15. Wait till the girls at work hear this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't wait till the office harpies try and pull the "but we can multitask" comment next ... I shal swiftly retaliate with this loaded in my "up yours" pistol

  16. Invalid test by roc97007 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Let's try this. You have four tasks. Each task has some dead time involved as you're waiting for something to happen. Subject 1 does each task sequentially. Subject 2 interleaves the tasks, doing work on the next task during the dead time in the previous task. Who finishes first?

    Multitasking reduces the time you are waiting for a task to complete, and in many environments, despite the acknowledged penalty due to context switching, you'll come out ahead.

    It seems like all they proved is that distraction is not good. (Well done, Captain Obvious.) That's not testing effectiveness of multitasking.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    1. Re:Invalid test by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      It seems like all they proved is that distraction is not good. (Well done, Captain Obvious.) That's not testing effectiveness of multitasking.

      Yeah, but now we know it's between 10% and 30% distracting! And now we know that, we can... um... ooh, shiny thing, brb.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    2. Re:Invalid test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fair enough, but how many "multitaskers" in the common parlance sense of the word are really trying to utilize dead time? From what I see, it is often simply that the actual work is boring, and people like to procrastinate by throwing in some unrelated periods of goofing off, hoping that they will still be productive enough that the goofing off doesn't get them in trouble.

      In other words, exactly what I'm doing right now ;-)

    3. Re:Invalid test by roc97007 · · Score: 2

      Yeah, ok, but it depends on what you mean by "multi". I have three PCs at work, and am typically working four or five jobs. But much of what I do is batch -- I set something up, let it run for awhile, and when its done it will sit there happily until I'm ready to look at it. The level of distraction is very low, but effectiveness would suffer greatly if I did all tasks sequentially.

      You can arrange the experiment to prove almost anything, if you ignore that the way multitasking is managed is important.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    4. Re:Invalid test by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      As I said in another post, the way multitasking is *managed* is important. This test doesn't appear to take that into account.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    5. Re:Invalid test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      >Subject 1 does each task sequentially. Subject 2 interleaves the tasks, doing work on the next task during the dead time in the previous task. Who finishes first?

      Is there a startup time associated with changing tasks?

      If there is none, and the tasks as simple as "Listen to music in the elevator" then "Go get a sandwich from the vending machine" you are right.

      If the tasks were even as complicated as "Listen to music by selecting a new record and playing it" then "Go make a sandwich and eat it" every time you ask someone to switch tasks there's startup costs associated with it. Let's say it takes 2 minutes to get the record player going, and 3 minutes to make the sandwich, if you have someone switch tasks every time they listen to a full song or every time they eat half of the sandwich, you are not getting your money's worth out of them.

      I don't know about you, but each time my concentration is broken it will add a few minutes to the length of time the task takes to start again because I now have to review where I left off. Depending on the complexity it might range from mere seconds to 15 minutes or even much more for something extremely complex.

    6. Re:Invalid test by RabidReindeer · · Score: 2

      Let's try this. You have four tasks. Each task has some dead time involved as you're waiting for something to happen. Subject 1 does each task sequentially. Subject 2 interleaves the tasks, doing work on the next task during the dead time in the previous task. Who finishes first?

      Multitasking reduces the time you are waiting for a task to complete, and in many environments, despite the acknowledged penalty due to context switching, you'll come out ahead.

      It seems like all they proved is that distraction is not good. (Well done, Captain Obvious.) That's not testing effectiveness of multitasking.

      Unfortunately, that's NOT what they're hitting me with when I'm pressed to multi-task. That's the kind of multi-tasking I used to do before everyone had to be 110% efficient, back when I dumped decks of punched-cards in at the computer room window, sat down and run through printouts from the previous runs, went over to the keypunch and punched corrections to those jobs while waiting for the morning's submissions to come back.

      We didn't use the word "multi-tasking" back then. Of course, we didn't use the word "pro-active" back then either, because we were supposed to be simply active. Get off my lawn.

      These days, it's not dead time to be exploited, it's running from one fabricated disaster to the next, and a lot of the fabricated disasters are a direct result of being "pro-active" and trying to get too much accomplished during non-dead time. Too much "efficiency" means too little time to handle the unexpected. Or, for that matter, properly plan for it.

    7. Re:Invalid test by sjames · · Score: 2

      Serial batch is not multi-tasking. Try doing those tasks while dealing with an asynchronous interrupt such as the phone or a drive-by manager.

    8. Re:Invalid test by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 1

      Multitasking reduces the time you are waiting for a task to complete, and in many environments, despite the acknowledged penalty due to context switching, you'll come out ahead.

      That's executing sequentially and not "multitasking" - you're only ever doing one thing at a time.

      Try completing all four tasks (or even just one) while holding a continuing conversation with someone, without gaps in either your work or the task. That is multitasking.
      (And your success at it will depend on the nature of the task and your own capabilities .)

    9. Re:Invalid test by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      Serial batch is not multi-tasking. Try doing those tasks while dealing with an asynchronous interrupt such as the phone or a drive-by manager.

      Everything you do is serial batch, if you adjust the granularity appropriately. If you're talking about excessively interrupt driven, I'd argue that's a special case of multitasking, and a singularly ineffective one.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    10. Re:Invalid test by roc97007 · · Score: 2

      Multitasking reduces the time you are waiting for a task to complete, and in many environments, despite the acknowledged penalty due to context switching, you'll come out ahead.

      That's executing sequentially and not "multitasking" - you're only ever doing one thing at a time.

      At a fine enough granularity, everything is sequential. If executing part of a task before going on to the next part of a different task is still doing tasks sequentially, then there is no such thing as multitasking, at least for reasonable definitions of the word.

      I had a drive-by manager incident today, while I was sharing my screen with what is laughably called IT in India while also dealing with a customer issue in a communicator window. Realistically, you can only do one thing at a time, although with fast enough context switching it *seems* like you're doing multiple things at once. (Just exactly like the old monolithic time sharing systems -- remember those?) This in my experience only works for things you know cold. Stuff that requires deep thought isn't effective until you shoo everyone out of the cube.

      Drive by management and phones ringing are a distraction from whatever task you're currently trying to complete. Everyone knows this -- why did we need to study it?

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    11. Re:Invalid test by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 1

      Yes, it is, because the brain doesn't inherently know if a task is related, nor does it matter. The more things the brain must attend do, the worse it does. Play pinball, the more balls on the field the more likely you are to lose a ball due to attentional reasons. The brain doesn't generally do "true" multitasking; attentional control is shifted from one task to the other, perhaps very rapidly, but it generally is quite serial in how it works.

    12. Re:Invalid test by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      Yes... well,,,,, yes... The reason I'm hesitating to provide complete agreement, is that I'm thinking reflexes are not serial. Otherwise you couldn't do something atheletic that had multiple simultaneous components.

      I think it's safe to say that the cognitive things we do are serial, but the body... the reflexes... the lizard brain, whatever you want to call it, can very definitely be trained to do more than one thing at a time.

      In the case of pinball, I would argue that you *can* manage multiple balls, if you've played long enough to adequately train reflexes instead of relying on the inherently slower forebrain.

      But in general, you're right on target. What we call "multitasking" (with the cognitive part of the brain) isn't really doing more than one thing at a time. It's done by context switches, as you say.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    13. Re:Invalid test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Three minutes to make the sandwich? Try 10 seconds to tell the wife to go make you a sandwich. Now that's multitasking by delegating!

    14. Re:Invalid test by cellocgw · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but now we know it's between 10% and 30% distracting! And now we know that, we can... um... ooh, shiny thing, brb.

      I think I missed something in the Official List of Slashdot memes: it used to be that "shiny thing" meant the writer had ADD, but it's beginning to look like a secret name for "boobies"

      --
      https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
  17. There are typically two types of people by tlambert · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you can listen to music and code at the same time, then you tend to do better in an open plan cube farm, but due to continuous partial attention, perhaps not so well as if you had some place quiet to cogitate.

    If you can't listen to music because that's the part of your brain that also processes code, you tend to be at a disadvantage because there's no refuge in wearing headphones. I do OK in an open plan environment, but I do better in an office, since when I get into a deep problem, I tend to react to expected distraction. On the plus side, I can generally go fairly deeper than someone who is listening to music, or at least that's my personal anecdotal experience.

    Generally speaking, in open plan cube farm companies, you can typically find a small conference room, or you can find a quiet corner of a lab, or you can grab a phone room, or you can work from home (which they tend to tolerate better than office-based companies) in these situations, so it's not impossible to make progress on deep problems.

    1. Re:There are typically two types of people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Do you know why, in some individuals, music processing and code generation are mutually exclusive ? I would like to know because I suffer from that to., Let me give you an advice, before I had an office, I had a refuge: a pair of noises cancelling headphones plugged into a muted jack.

    2. Re:There are typically two types of people by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2

      Lots of coders put on some of the most insane music to help them concentrate. I use music to drown out distractions. Distractions like ringing phones, people yapping about this or that, etc. (everything bad about an open floor plan). I also use music /for/ a bit of distraction - I can't concentrate as well on tasks in an anechoic chamber as I can with music playing.

      I think it's a bit more complicated.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    3. Re:There are typically two types of people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not totally true. In my case, I actually use that music and my headphones to cut out the loud people around me. My music doesn't try to crack jokes every few minutes or isn't constantly angry. That last part is more annoying as negativity impacts people more than jokes.

    4. Re:There are typically two types of people by jittles · · Score: 2

      Hmm, my boss and my girlfriend both think I do an amazing job of tuning aboslutely all noise out to focus on things. In fact, if I am reading, or coding, or even watching TV I can completely lose track of the fact that there are other people around. I often listen to music while I code and realize suddenly that I hadn't heard a sing song in 20-30 minutes. I think this comes from the fact that I grew up in a very large family, with a very noisy house. If you couldn't learn to tune everything out, you could never read, do homework, or even watch TV.

  18. Any gender differences? by happyfeet2000 · · Score: 2

    Many ladies claim that men can only do one thing at a time...

    1. Re:Any gender differences? by mister_playboy · · Score: 2

      and? There nothing wrong with letting her handle the vibrator. You get better leverage with both hands free. :)

      --
      Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
    2. Re:Any gender differences? by mr1911 · · Score: 1

      and? There nothing wrong with letting her handle the vibrator. You get better leverage with both hands free. :)

      If you need a vibrator and both hands free, you're doing it wrong.

      --
      This post comes with a double-your-money-back guarantee!
      Any offense taken to this post is at your sole discretion.
    3. Re:Any gender differences? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you don't use a vibrator and anyone's hands are free, you're doing it boring.

  19. Mod parent up. by khasim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The trick to "multi-tasking" is to break the various tasks down into sub-tasks that can be completed in the time between interruptions.

    The human brain is NOT good at focusing on two or more conscious tasks.

    1. Re:Mod parent up. by kaizokuace · · Score: 1

      don't forget to plan your task schedule to account for context switching. That usually takes time to gear for a new context.

      --
      Balderdash!
  20. How about try it with a bartender by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And stop using the general population for stupid tests.

    Bartenders have no problem hearing everything in noisy crowds.

    OH WAIT, but let's just forget those because "multitasking is bad mmkay".
    Utter drivel.

    This is also a bad example of multi-tasking.

    1. Re:How about try it with a bartender by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 2

      How much you wanna bet the bartender makes more errors the busier it gets and the more stimuli he has to attend to?

  21. Simple solution ... by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 3, Funny

    Tell your mom to stop letting people run through her basement.

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  22. slashdot-dot-dice-dot-com is exciting! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lots of neat things could be in store... say what?

  23. Vital functions by kulnor · · Score: 1

    So should I focus on making sure my heart is beating, breathing regularly, or digest food?

  24. As someone knowing neurology: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can tell you, that this was very obvious to everyone who knows how neural nets work.

    This is only, so we have observations matching our theories. We already were pretty much 100% sure about it before.

  25. multitasking test by NikeHerc · · Score: 1

    You think you can drive and text at the same time and avoid causing an accident. You are wrong!

    Please don't find out the hard way.

    --
    Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
    1. Re:multitasking test by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      You think you can drive and text at the same time and avoid causing an accident. You are wrong!

      Hell, forget driving, try something more basic, like walking. People walk into street furniture all the time (I'm sure YouTube has millions of people walking into lamp posts, benches, fountains and down stairs). Or even worse, walking onto the road in front of a car (happens quite often), usually with very tragic results. And these aren't the people who try to be oblivious to the outside world.

      Driving is complicated, walking is not (and really, it doesn't take a lot of higher-order thinking, either to move your feet). If people can't even pay attention enough to walk down the street without bumping/tripping/etc into something (including cars), you expect them to do better when they're dealing with a complex vehicle that requires situational awareness?

      Heck, you can tell who's on a cellphone these days - if they're a pedestrian, they walk much slower than the crowd and seem to be drunk at best. If they're driving, they're the ones unable ot keep up with traffic or jerk forward, stop, jerk forward, stop in slow moving traffic. (And they call themselves good drivers, too...).

      Alas, while Darwin works fine for pedestrians, it doesn't work so much for drivers...

    2. Re:multitasking test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You think you can drive and text at the same time and avoid causing an accident. You are wrong!

      If it was that simple, nobody at all would think they can do it.

      Most of the time, they can drive and text at the same time and avoid causing an accident, and do so on a daily basis. The tricky bit is that the risk occupies a space between "small enough to dismiss statistically" and "large enough to be obvious to everyone".

  26. Stupid experiment by Hatta · · Score: 2

    Multitasking is doing two tasks at once. This is just distracting the kids. When people multitask, they generally get to choose when they do each task. In this experiment they just randomly hear unrelated words. This experiment has nothing to do with multitasking.

    I'm not going to argue that multitasking is beneficial, but the real story is the abysmal quality of this research.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    1. Re:Stupid experiment by sjames · · Score: 1

      Actually, multitasking has morphed into corporate speak for a noisy distracting cube farm where you're not allowed to turn the ringer on your phone off.

    2. Re:Stupid experiment by eulernet · · Score: 1

      Sorry, but you are wrong.

      Understanding written or spoken words use the same parts of the brain, so this is multitasking.

      It would be different if they were experimenting unrelated tasks, like reading and passively listening (without focus) to music.
      You don't use the same parts of your brain for such tasks.

    3. Re:Stupid experiment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just because your brain isn't actively filtering and dividing attention between unintended stimuli like everyone else's doesn't mean /we're/ not multi-tasking. Also, did you find your definition of multi- in the Bible next to the value of Pi?

    4. Re:Stupid experiment by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 1

      This research is absolutely fine and you are the one that is utterly confused. What do you think human attention is? Cognitively speaking, the more you have to attend to, the more your attention must shift between all the stimuli. Also, you can't completely focus on what is hitting your ears unless you (to use your own poorly-chosen words) "choose" to attend to it, who cares if they chose the task to begin with or not?

      Most of you are confusing multitasking on the overt functional level and the cognitive level; the two are obviously related but this experiment is more directly tied to the cognitive level. Of course "distracting kids!" is, cognitively speaking, multitasking, their brain is given another task to have to attend to in addition to the other(s).

    5. Re:Stupid experiment by raymorris · · Score: 1

      > , their brain is given another task to have to attend to in addition to the other(s). A task they are given no credit for completing, thereby ignoring half of the tasks completed. If I listen to a lecture while perusing email, sure I my process fewer emails. BUT I also listened to the lecture. The study ignores the value of having heard the lecture. Or say I ride the bus and write a report. I didn't ride any additional miles, so according to that study multi-tasking (writing while riding) didn't do me any good. You have to count BOTH tasks as complete, because you did TWO things. Saying the subjects didn't do a better job of task #1 completely misses the point of multi-tasking.

    6. Re:Stupid experiment by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 1

      > BUT I also listened to the lecture. The study ignores the value of having heard the lecture.

      You almost certainly did not "absorb" it as well. Good thing they've done studies just like or similar to what you described--guess what? Memory retention is much, much lower as your brain had to bounce in between focusing on the e-mails and the lecture.

      >Or say I ride the bus and write a report. I didn't ride any additional miles, so according to that study multi-tasking (writing while riding) didn't do me any good.

      Wait, wait, you're counting sitting on the bus as a separate cognitive task than writing a report? Seriously? And you think you're fit to critique this study?

      >You have to count BOTH tasks as complete, because you did TWO things.

      You don't even understand this study. I doubt you read the article, much less the journal article. This is a study on human cognition in regards to attention.

    7. Re:Stupid experiment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey now. This is Louisiana we're talking about. Does it still count as multitasking if she's both your sister and your first cousin?

  27. Summery is not describing multitasking by wisnoskij · · Score: 1

    That is simply distraction. According to the summery they where only ever tasked with doing one thing, but in the "multitasking" phase they where distracted by extraneous noises.

    --
    Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    1. Re:Summery is not describing multitasking by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 1

      Which, cognitively speaking, is irrelevant. The brain has to focus between two different tasks. Filtering out "distractions" is a task. This research is fine and this is actually very standard sort of methodology in cognitive science/psychology and frankly I'm not even sure how this is even newsworthy at all.

    2. Re:Summery is not describing multitasking by wisnoskij · · Score: 1

      A partially subconscious "task" is not the same as actually having a goal (or 2 in the case of multitasking) and actively accomplishing it/them.
      And if the reason of study is to find productivity you must add up all tasks, which is impossible if we are talking about distractions as tasks. Of course if you add a second concurrent task you become slower at the first task, but overall you very well might be getting more done, the same, or less (this study cannot say either way, as it is flawed).

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    3. Re:Summery is not describing multitasking by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 1

      A partially subconscious "task" is not the same as actually having a goal (or 2 in the case of multitasking) and actively accomplishing it/them.

      Again, irrelevant, since cognitively speaking both are two separate tasks and our external interpretation of whether something is being done or accomplished is really quite irrelevant. This is a fine experiment as described and is standard methodology within cognitive psychology. Boy, I wish I had an armchair psychologist's understanding of cognitive psychology so I, too, could bloviate about a subject I know nothing about. Again, this study isn't saying you can't fart and chew bubble gum at the same time, or that you can't save time reading the newspaper while eating your breakfast.

    4. Re:Summery is not describing multitasking by wisnoskij · · Score: 1

      OK the distraction is a task, for the sake of the argument, I will agree on that point.
      But how are we to measure the productivity of ignoring the distraction.

      And at the end of day, it does not matter if it is standard methodology. It matters if it actually correct methodology.

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    5. Re:Summery is not describing multitasking by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 1

      Which it is, fortunately.

  28. context overlap by eegad · · Score: 2

    Without having read the article, it seems like this study might have a flaw. The brief description seems to imply an overlap in the two tasks: memorizing read words and hearing unrelated words. I'm not sure most types of multitasking are like this. I can context switch as long as there's enough switched. Besides, isn't real multitasking the ability to make progress on one task and then ignore it for a bit while making progress on another task? I hardly ever attempt to do *simultaneous tasks*.

  29. Not quite. by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 1

    I can't listen to an audiobook and read textual content at the same time, because it's using the same 'context' in my brain. I also can't talk while listening to an audiobook (I miss book content) but I can sing. I can also listen to an audiobook and play a game on my tablet - depending on the skills involved in the game. And I retain what I've heard while doing well in the game.

    Seems pretty clear that if you are focusing on one task, and you interrupt/overlap that task with contextually related data... you're going to suffer cognitive impairment.

    What happens if the participants are asked to memoeize a sequence of colors or shapes while listening to words in the background?

    1. Re:Not quite. by neminem · · Score: 1

      Even more than that - I've found that I can read just as quickly while listening to music as while not, but if the music has -singing-, my reading speed is much slower. Unless the singing is in a language I don't understand, in which case it's just as fast again.

    2. Re:Not quite. by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 1

      I play MMO's with comedy playing on my G19 keyboards little screen. I can follow both really well. But if the MMO has a talking section that gets busy (must have information, interesting story) I need to pause the TV. Not so in combat unless I have to use voice chat. Typed chat is no problem.

      For the person below, I listen to Japanese music for that reason, it is wonderfully old fashioned, contains little anger and it is like a Sim singing, it has rythm, is nice to listen to but I don't have to process what is being said.

      Samething with Alizee (french singer who inspired the night elf dance in WoW). That particular song has the most inane lyrics but it sounds wonderful. The words chosen for their sound, rather then any meaning.

      I think people underestimate how many tasks we can combine NOT because we can do seperate tasks at the same time by thinking about it, but by how automated it has become. Take for instance me typing this. My fingers move on autopilot, if I start thinking about it, I start making lots of mistakes. I couldn't tell your were the s key is but I can hit it nonetheless. Who is typing? Me? Or another bit of my brain I am not even aware of in my consciousness? While typing this, I can even think more the one thought at the same time. Not very complex ones, but still, while my brain is waiting for my fingers to finish typing, I can think ahead to the next line.

      Your body seems more capable then you by the a longshot.

      --

      MMO Quests are like orgasms:

      You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  30. Cough cough handsfree cell phones don't work cough by rikkards · · Score: 1

    Knew this years ago

  31. Sorry, you were saying? by broknstrngz · · Score: 1

    I was reading something in a different tab at the same time.

    1. Re:Sorry, you were saying? by nemesisfixx · · Score: 1

      and had to make the comment while reading...

  32. What's the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can drive, eat, change the radio, text and piss you off all at the same time.

  33. It depends by aNonnyMouseCowered · · Score: 1

    Like everything in life, it depends.

    It depends on: a) What you mean by "task". Is a task an activity taken in isolation? Or a series of smaller related activities. Let's say you're a cook. You chop the onions while waiting for the broth to cook. Or you can do a totally unrelated activity like Facebook rather than "unproductively" stare at the oven for an hour.

    b) Speed that you switch tasks. If you change tasks every few minutes, your productivity drops because you need to speed some time acquainting or reacquainting yourself with the new or suspended task. Extreme example: you're a farmer, obviously you should be doing something while waiting for the corn field to bloom.

    c) Whether you can do some activities autonomically. Is breathing while talking multitasking? Is listening to music while editing a news report?

    1. Re:It depends by godrik · · Score: 1

      I usually consider human multitasking as "begin able to perform two precise tasks simultaneously in less time than it would take to do one and then the other." Or for the 'continuous' tasks it would be without loss of accuracy.

      Clearly, I can not talk and watch a movie. And clealry my wife can not browse the web and watch tv.

  34. what a load of hogwash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i can multitask with no problems, i can pat my head and rub my tummy at the same time. This study is wrong!

  35. Title partially invalid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The title given here of "More Evidence That Multitasking Reduces Productivity" is not entirely correct. The linked site claims "Distracting sounds linked to diminished focus, memory" which is not the same as multitasking decreasing productivity. To measure the productivity of multitasking one would have to assume both tasks to be productive and measure both rather than one alone.

  36. Good news for Windows 8 by maxbash · · Score: 1

    Sound like Microsoft will like this news as Windows 8's interface makes multitasking difficult.

  37. The real problem is one of definition by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What is multi-tasking. Doing several tasks, each individual task segmented into short activities, combined together to a larger activity for several hours OR trying to pat your head and rub your stomach while performing open heart surgery, piloting a jet in combat and making love... okay, this is slashdot... jerking off.

    Women often claim they multi-task better then men but this is usually the first type. Putting the laundry in, making a shopping list, dropping the kids off, go to work, run an errand, make a call, do the shopping, put laundry in dryer, prepare the long cooking part of dinner, pick kids up, listen to their stories, finish cooking etc etc.

    This is multi-tasking, computer style. A computer (single CPU at least) does NOT do multipletasks... AT THE SAME TIME. Rather it switches between them and being a computer, it does this really fast. For humans, the switching can only be done so fast but sometimes it is necessary.

    But it has been shown beyond a doubt that doing two tasks at the same time is something we are very bad at. All humans. Driving and doing ANYTHING else at the same time, massively increases the chance of an accident. Yes you to, wonder driver.

    This test was not about doing several tasks that people had to switch between, but doing several things at once.

    Useful multi-tasking still allows you to concentrate on each individual task fully OR trade-off accuracy (listening to kids while doing housework, watching TV while going, "your right" to the wive... okay... your mom. But as any husband knows, this is highly dangerous because you might miss something essential. And then their is hell to pay.

    I can read a document and talk on the phone at the same time but I also find I make far more reading mistakes, missing entire lines or reading a word completely wrong causing me to mis-interpret the text.

    MindlessAutomata (on-topic nick if ever there was one) makes however one mistake. The human brain isn't massively parallel, our entire body is. You! do not exist. Rather there is a collection of individual cells, tiny lifeforms many of which don't have any of "your" DNA (bacteria) which have formed a "colony" not unlike a coral where multiple animals work together to survive and reproduce. Your gut for instance can be severed from your brain and continue to function. Few other parts can do that as paraplegics demonstrate by being unable to move below the waste but still have their gut work just fine.

    You don't even have think about most massive processing your brain does. You can "think" about what you are seeing without even knowing or controlling HOW you see. How all that light is processed into a picture. We don't even think about, for the longest time we didn't even understand. Or language. How come you understand these strange symbols?

    But this again, is not multi-tasking. It is closer to a computer having seperate processors for discrete tasks.

    Truly doing several things at once, is hard.

    Just pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. And no, it doesn't count if you learned yourself how to do that. Then you are just doing ONE thing that just involves two hands. That is easy, any mechanic can do that. The trick about the patting and rubbing is doing two things you normally never do together, at once. And then your massive brain has serious problems.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  38. Nope, it means your doing it right by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 1

    Sex is the one area where more = more. Bring in the donkey!

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  39. According to two sources, it's because... by tlambert · · Score: 1

    Listening to music is a right brain activity, and making intuitive cognitive leaps, such as concluding closure of an algorithm or detailed debugging operations is also a right brain activity.

    The two sources I have are:

    The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
    Jaynes, Julian
    Houghton Mifflin, 1976
    Mariner Books, 2000 ISBN-10: 0618057072
    Pages 367-368

    Peopleware : productive projects and teams
    Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister
    Dorsett House, 1999 ISBN-10: 0932633439
    Online PDF: Search for PeopleWare_2ed.pdf
    Pages 78, 230, 231 anecdotally document a Cornell experiment, and claim personal involvement

    Both books are still in print in hard copy from Amazon.

    1. Re:According to two sources, it's because... by Reziac · · Score: 1

      Interesting. I write fiction (which as I do it is mostly a series of cognitive leaps), and I find I concentrate and "do my thing" best when the whole rest of me is busy doing something else, such as physical labor or ... listening to music; the best music for the purpose is EBM/industrial/aggrotech, where half the time you can't understand 'em anyway. I wonder if what it really does is drown out the white noise from the *rest* of the right brain, which would otherwise be wandering in all directions.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  40. Bad subjects, poor concept by mveloso · · Score: 1

    Lets see: if you spew random words into people's ears they can't remember the words they're supposed to. This happens all the time in work: try to count a bunch of items when others are saying random numbers at you. It's fun, but hardly groundbreaking.

    And they did this with 2nd graders and college students.

    Why don't they use real professionals in these studies? 2nd graders have attention spans of gnats. College students have the attention span of big gnats. And the task is ridiculous.

    Real multitasking happens in the classroom all the time, when students in lecture zone out when the professor drones on. Real multitasking happen at work. Ask any mom at home how they do it. Using idiots for subjects guarantees bad results.

    My god, how much of psychology is based on college students?

  41. and just when by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i've become pretty good at 69

  42. James Franco is Lying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wonder if this new study has anything to do with this new commercial (Galaxy Note 10.1)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mzTp8v8d04 ;)

  43. DVR's by YaddaMinski · · Score: 1

    I have been spending more time at a property I acquired to see if I might want to live there. I did not sign up for cable tv etc so I only have OTA TV and my iPhone. Not using a DVR I have noticed I have to pay much better attention to programs (using DVD player for old series too). And the iPhone-only for Internet has let me refocus on long term tasks. 24x7365 is dead end. I am cutting the cable for tv to start.

  44. Article is misleading by lpq · · Score: 1

    The study was about whether or not unrelated noise would cause distraction and hinder focus -- NOT about multitasking.

    Then the author of the study uses that to make general statements
    about multitasking.

    Multi tasking isn't about "distractions", and how they hurt performance
    on a primary task, it's about having more than 1 primary task and being
    able to do it with some degree of facility while you do another.

    Yes -- it's obvious, you devote 50% cpu to 1 task, another task will only have 50%... there's no free lunch.. AND just like with computers, there's
    an overhead with mutlitasking.

    BUT, do we design computers to only do 1 thing at a time?

    Why would you think humans would be incapable of doing the same
    thing (albeit at a vastly reduced pace)?

  45. truly deep thinking by ToddInSF · · Score: 1

    involves more than just a scattered approach that relies upon sitting in front of a computer screen.

    Serious study and contemplation isn't about reliance on google. You can't compare google, or ANY search engine, to sitting in a decent library and actually digging for enlightenment on a particular subject.

    Contemplation for days, and weeks, is not substituted for a fleeting synopsis, often written by someone with a particular undisclosed agenda.

    What we've ended up with now are a great many people who sit in front of a computer all day, who truly believe they are well educated, well informed, intelligent, and even perceptive.

    What they really are is the worst kind of imposers regurgitating someone else's undisclosed agendas and fallacies, narrow views, agendas, and prejudices, often masquerading as "scientific".

    You see the lack of contemplative ability every day in the lack of knowledge of history, of interrelations, conversations with such people are always boring - they have nothing to actually contribute, they don't really know anything, and they are usually incapable of articulating ideas without a great deal of obfuscation and markedly politically loaded language.

    What's remarkable about this is that once you know how to look for it, it's amazingly easy to distinguish. One of the primary characterizations of it is the shutting down of elucidation, the thwarting of interest in and the elaboration of the subject at hand, and an attitude that the speaker already knows everything - always a red flag.