I made this drawing over the weekend while watching football on television, listening to an audiobook, and intermittently using my computer. Multitasking such as this is pretty common these days. Does anyone think that is a good thing?
Multitasking
You’re reading Signal v. Noise, a publication about the web by Basecamp since 1999. Happy !
I made this drawing over the weekend while watching football on television, listening to an audiobook, and intermittently using my computer. Multitasking such as this is pretty common these days. Does anyone think that is a good thing?
Scott Higdon
on 15 Jan 13In response to this very cool photo and your question about multitasking, I believe it is becoming part of who we are and what we do. Just look around in traffic, no one just sits and listens to the radio at a stand still, we check our smart phone for emails, text or we even make notes of things to do when we arrive at our destination. Our family time at home cannot go 15-20 mins without someone checking their phone, surfing the web on their tablet or phone. In everything we do, there just does not seem to be enough to keep our interest, so we seek out other things to do to occupy our minds. You listed a lot of things you were doing, but were you doing any of them at 100% or were the tv and audio book just background noise? Are some of the things we do just white noise and not really serving a real purpose? I don’t know if it is good or bad, but it is becoming more prevalent.
Matt Bridges
on 15 Jan 13Multitasking is a fantastic ability to have, but you aught to use it carefully. Here is a very interesting article about multitasking that we all should take into careful consideration when we are doing lots of things at once:
http://sirupsen.com/multitasking-makes-you-dumb
Selena Blake
on 15 Jan 13I want to say yes, multitasking is a good thing, but I think the older a person gets the harder it is to multitask well. It’s just a brain power issue in my opinion. I’ve noticed a decline in my memory and attention span in the last ten years and I hate to think where I’ll be ten years from now. But I used to be able to work on multiple projects at a time and now I just feel like I’m spinning my wheels, unsure of what I was going to do next and I just sit at my computer hopping from one window to the next trying to remember where I was headed. I read a book on the topic once and the author claims that women are better multitaskers than men. I’m not sure if that’s true, but thought it was interesting.
David Pieropan
on 16 Jan 13I don’t think it is. I will quote Nova Science page : “Do two or more things simultaneously, and you’ll do none at full capacity.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/is-multitasking-bad.html
J. Dawg
on 16 Jan 13Yes, a lot of people seem to think that is a good thing. That said, they don’t really seem to think about it much. In fact, they don’t seem to really sit down and think about anything for very long.
That said, a lot of people work on the cutting edge all the time, regardless of duration. Is society becoming more like our own brains? Are we less and less like isolated individuals (amoebic cells) and more and more like neurons, contributing small bits to a greater whole? That’d be cool.
I think I’ve had too much caffeine today.
GeeIWonder
on 16 Jan 13Multitasking is hardly new. I challenge that premise.
What you’re talking about appears to be superficial involvement/investment.
This may place your work in the world of dream art or something like action painting or automatism. However, there’s a conflict here as you are also imposing clearly (possibly periodically) rules of form and a particular style. Maybe it’s more like compulsion. Or quasi-narcolepsy.
Whether it’s a good thing or not depends entirely on you. It might be excellent therapy for you. I think proponents of the ‘traditional’ schools I mentioned (along with others) above and others would say it is neither honest/intense enough to give any insight into the rhythms and nature of subconscious thought—the scaffolding is far too rigid, nor is it technically interesting or difficult enough to be a display of acute concentration and the insights that come at that extreme. And others would argue that you’re doing it for yourself anyways, so who cares?
GeeIWonder
on 16 Jan 13More cynical observers might see it as relevant embodiment of e.g. wider ADD/OCD trends, which would perhaps place it more firmly in a historical context. People might argue over intent vs. capacity.
Nicholas Perry
on 16 Jan 13Doesn’t multitasking really only affect certain aspects of your brain at one time. The ability to use your ears at the same time as doing something physical with your hands, doesn’t really affect anything?
I know that in game design, we use sounds to help illustrate events in the game since normally visual bandwidth is all used up with following the player or enemies on the screen.
I imagine that someone who can draw like that has a lot of his focus tied up in muscle memory and is able to not focus so much on the task at hand and still get good results – especially when there really isn’t an over-arching theme needed to be accomplished.
Darcy Fitzpatrick
on 16 Jan 13It depends on the tasks. It seems like none of the things you were doing were time sensitive or put you under any pressure. They all seem like pretty relaxing ways of exercising different parts of your brain.
It’s when you have to prep and cook a meal while writing an essay for school and talking to your mother on the phone that things start to fall apart. Each one of these tasks demands your full attention and are each in their own ways time senstive. By trying to do all three at once you’re likely to do them all poorly. Better to take them one at a time.
So yeah, it depends on the tasks.
Mark Stanley
on 16 Jan 13What you describe sounds a bit like my son doing his Chemistry homework! In my experience the quality of his output IS affected by the number of distractions/tasks he has going on at the same time.
Whether that is a problem or not is the question – if you are happy with “good enough” then I’d say spreading your attention across several things at once is fine. Right now I’m meant to be writing a proposal, which needs to be amazing so I probably need to focus totally on that, and not for example get distracted by SvN…
Maybe only you can judge Nate – are you happy with the drawing, did you absorb much of the audiobook, were you shouting at the football?
quiz
on 16 Jan 13getting in the zone sometimes requires some “white” noise for some folks, maybe you are one, and maybe that drawing did not require a whole lot of super concentrated effort on your part so you could do a few things “at once” but, multitasking, like a CPU, is flitting from one thing to another rapidly, up to you to decide if that is good for the task(s) at hand talking while doing manual labor has been done for millennia, that’s “multitasking” too and walking while chewing gum and while thinking and while playing with a yoyo
Nate Otto
on 16 Jan 13It occurred to me after I posted that what I describe isn’t multitasking at all. There was really only one task: that of making the drawing. Everything else was really just input that I could receive in whatever amounts I chose. While none of the inputs really interfered with my ability to concentrate on my drawing, I did notice that I couldn’t fully comprehend both the audio book and the football game at the same time. Without the sound of the football game, I didn’t know when to look up to catch something important, and when I focused on the game, I lost track of the book.
Leonel S
on 16 Jan 13http://lifehacker.com/5922453/what-multitasking-does-to-our-brains
GeeIWonder
on 16 Jan 13look up to catch something important
Well if you’re looking for insights I’d say forget for now the routine and focus on the important moments. How do you handle conflicts which are of prime importance in each task—the book, the football, and the drawing? Is the drawing twice as important as the football? Does the live event trump the recorded book and the drawing where you can proceed from where you left off? etc etc
Scott
on 16 Jan 13Instead of “multitasking”, I think you mean “frequent task switching”. The human brain can not (effectively) multitask.
Bill McNeely
on 16 Jan 13Nate if everybody can multi-task or frequent task switch and produce the quality outcome you did on your painting on each task , who cares?
Pete
on 16 Jan 13When you really want to get something done properly, I believe that task should receive your full attention. Taking breaks is ok, but trying to juggle multiple tasks will usually result in lower quality.
It’s been mentioned by Scott Higdon, this is becoming a part of our everyday routine, we are trying to keep ourselves occupied constantly (usually trying to distract ourselves constantly)... and for the record I think it’s a bad trend.
I believe that we should be taking efforts to slow down (individually) and focus on things that add a little bit of meaning to us personally instead of just looking for meaningless ways to pass the time in hopes that something somewhere will give us fulfillment. It would also make us better at what we do overall.
my2c.
Bob Ross
on 17 Jan 13This drawing looks like it was done by a handicapped child. Also, where are the happy little trees? Did I teach you nothing?!?
Huxley Conklin
on 17 Jan 13I like the analogy of the juggler when discussing multi-tasking. Most people can multi-task to various degrees. For example, the juggler can easily manage two balls at the same time. In fact, I not sure this is considered juggling yet. But when you add the third and consecutive balls, this is juggling and is analogous to multi-tasking. The more balls in the air, the less time the juggler can concentrate on each ball, the less time the juggler has to field and release the ball and the less time to get it right. The same is true with multi-tasking. The more tasks we try to perform simultaneously, the less time we have to consider the task, the right decision and its consequences. Controlled multi-tasking is an important skill for most managers, parents and others in positions of decision making. Decisions that follow a pattern can be multi-tasked more easily than those that require individual or unique responses. Perhaps, the problem is that the better we become at our work (whatever the endeavor) the greater the expectation is that we could do more. Doing “more” may actually make us less proficient at what we used to do well. The well worn adage, “all things in moderation,” would seem to be the practical approach to the unevenness in the workload encountered in our lives, personally and at work. Not too many balls in the air too much of the time.
Navin Harish
on 21 Jan 13NO. Here is a link to my little drawing and my opinion. Multitasking – A myth or reality http://navinharish.org/mentalfloss/2011/10/multitasking-a-myth-or-reality/
Francis Shephard
on 22 Jan 13MultiTasking has its place, but its proven to reduce the depth and quality of thinking. Its a detractor from substantial and continued thinking on a focussed subject. So if what we are needing to do in our day, requires only light weight mild episodes of thought, then multitasking is ok.
Whereas if we really need to get into the details and hold focus, multitasking is an awful rotter who needs to be locked outside.
Vincent C. Huang
on 22 Jan 13It’s about prioritizing activities and tasks.
We are living in an attention economy. Assuming that technology has given us the tools to be more productive, it’s a question of how productive does one need to be at the task? There are tasks that require 100% of our attention. I doubt we’d ever see Ernie Els checking playing words with friends while going for the 30 yard putt. However, we’re probably going to see Alec Baldwin play, sipping on a cocktail, listening to the safety instructions while taxing to the take-off.
The same goes for me while listening to podcasts. Startups for the Rest of Us requires close to all my attention while This American Life is something I can do while completing chores around the house.
To sum it up, we put our attention in a hierarchy. For low-attention activities or intermittent activities, multi-tasking makes can be accretive. For intense activities, multitasking is dilutive.
jrriqxub
on 22 Jan 131
ffoiedin
on 22 Jan 131
This discussion is closed.