The Myth of Multitasking
Metadata
- Document Note: Multitasking has become a popular way of life for many people, and technology has played a significant role in it. However, studies have shown that multitasking can be dangerous, especially while driving, and can even cost the US economy $650 billion a year in lost productivity. A psychiatrist who specializes in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder has called multitasking a "mythical activity," and bestselling author Timothy Ferriss also touts the benefits of "single-tasking." Multitasking has been found to contribute to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline, which can lead to long-term health problems if not controlled.
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 - Chesterfield
We have always multitasked - inability to walk and chew gum is atime-honored cause for derision - but never so intensely or self-consciously as now. We are multitasking connoisseurs - experts in crowding, pressing, packing, and overlapping distinct activities in our all-too-finite moments. - James Gleick in Faster
A Harvard Business Review "Breakthrough Ideas" from Linda Stone, talks about 'continuous partial attention'.
Constantly scanning for opportunities and staying on top of contacts, events, and activities in an effort to miss nothing.
[Multitasking is a] mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously. - Edward Hallowell from CrazyBusy
Edward Hallowell coind the Attention Deficit Trait or ADT which is rampant in the business world. It's a:
Purely a response to the hyperkinetic environment in which we live. Never in history has the human brain been asked to track so many data points. [This challenge] can be controlled only by creatively engineering one's environment and one's emotional and physical health. - Edward Hallowell
One study showed that office workers take on average 25 minutes to recover from interruptions.
Rene Marois a psychologist at Vanderbilt University found a 'response selection bottleneck' that occurs when the brain is forced to respond to several stimuli at once. This is effectively Context Switching.
David Meyer thinks instead of a bottleneck, a process of adaptive executive control takes place, which schedules task process appropriately to obey instructions about their relative prioritieis and serial order.
David Meyer is optimistic that with training the brain can learn to task-switch more effectively, and there is some evidence that certain simple tasks are amenable to such practice. His research also shows that multitasking releases stress hormones and adrenaline,w hich can cause long term health problems and contributes to the loss of short-term memory.
Russell Poldrack, apsychology professor found that multitasking adversly affects how you learn. even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.
Distracted: Stored in striatum, a region of the brain involved in learning new skills.
Undistracted: Stored in hippocampus, a region involved in storing and recalling information.
We have to be aware that there is a cost to the way that our society is changing, that humans are not built to work this way. We're really built to focus. And when we sort of force ourselves to multitask, we're driving ourselves to perhaps be less efficient in the long run even though it sometimes feels like we're being more efficient. Russell Poldrack
Paying Attention
When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgement about what objects are worthy of our attention.
William James, psychologist wrote at length about the variest of human attention in The Principles of Psychology such as:- Sensorial Attention
- Intellectual Attention
- Passive Attention
James compared our stream of thought to a river, and his observations presaged the cognitive 'bottlenecks' described later by neurologists
On the whole easy simple flowing predominates in it, the drift of things is with the pull of gravity, and effortless attention is the rule. But at intervals an obstruction, a set-back, a log-jam occurs, stops the current, creates an eddy, and makes things temporarily move the other way. - William James
Steady attention is the default condition of a mature mind, an ordinary state undone only by perturbation.
The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgement, character, and will - William James - URL: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-myth-of-multitasking
Highlights
Multitasking might also be taking a toll on the economy. One study by researchers at the University of California at Irvine monitored interruptions among office workers; they found that workers took an average of twenty-five minutes to recover from interruptions such as phone calls or answering e-mail and return to their original task. Discussing multitasking with the New York Times in 2007, Jonathan B. Spira, an analyst at the business research firm Basex, estimated that extreme multitasking — information overload — costs the U.S. economy $650 billion a year in lost productivity. (View Highlight) #✂️
To better understand the multitasking phenomenon, neurologists and psychologists have studied the workings of the brain. In 1999, Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (part of the National Institutes of Health), used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to determine that when people engage in “task-switching” — that is, multitasking behavior — the flow of blood increases to a region of the frontal cortex called Brodmann area 10. (View Highlight) #✂️ #👻 ai highlighted
Discussing his research on National Public Radio recently, Poldrack warned, “We have to be aware that there is a cost to the way that our society is changing, that humans are not built to work this way. We’re really built to focus. And when we sort of force ourselves to multitask, we’re driving ourselves to perhaps be less efficient in the long run even though it sometimes feels like we’re being more efficient.” (View Highlight) #✂️ #👻 ai highlighted
If, as Poldrack concluded, “multitasking changes the way people learn,” what might this mean for today’s children and teens, raised with an excess of new entertainment and educational technology, and avidly multitasking at a young age? Poldrack calls this the “million-dollar question.” Media multitasking — that is, the simultaneous use of several different media, such as television, the Internet, video games, text messages, telephones, and e-mail — is clearly on the rise, as a 2006 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed: in 1999, only 16 percent of the time people spent using any of those media was spent on multiple media at once; by 2005, 26 percent of media time was spent multitasking. (View Highlight) #✂️ #👻 ai highlighted
tags: [✂️,📰]
title: "The Myth of Multitasking"
author:
- "Christine Rosen"
cover: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/imgLib/20160322_TNA20Rosen1200x627.jpg
url: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-myth-of-multitasking
source: "reader"
parent: "The Myth of Multitasking - Christine Rosen"
related: "Highlights"
create-date: "2025-01-15"
dg-publish: true
The Myth of Multitasking
Metadata
- Document Note: Multitasking has become a popular way of life for many people, and technology has played a significant role in it. However, studies have shown that multitasking can be dangerous, especially while driving, and can even cost the US economy $650 billion a year in lost productivity. A psychiatrist who specializes in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder has called multitasking a "mythical activity," and bestselling author Timothy Ferriss also touts the benefits of "single-tasking." Multitasking has been found to contribute to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline, which can lead to long-term health problems if not controlled.
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 - Chesterfield
We have always multitasked - inability to walk and chew gum is atime-honored cause for derision - but never so intensely or self-consciously as now. We are multitasking connoisseurs - experts in crowding, pressing, packing, and overlapping distinct activities in our all-too-finite moments. - James Gleick in Faster
A Harvard Business Review "Breakthrough Ideas" from Linda Stone, talks about 'continuous partial attention'.
Constantly scanning for opportunities and staying on top of contacts, events, and activities in an effort to miss nothing.
[Multitasking is a] mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously. - Edward Hallowell from CrazyBusy
Edward Hallowell coind the Attention Deficit Trait or ADT which is rampant in the business world. It's a:
Purely a response to the hyperkinetic environment in which we live. Never in history has the human brain been asked to track so many data points. [This challenge] can be controlled only by creatively engineering one's environment and one's emotional and physical health. - Edward Hallowell
One study showed that office workers take on average 25 minutes to recover from interruptions.
Rene Marois a psychologist at Vanderbilt University found a 'response selection bottleneck' that occurs when the brain is forced to respond to several stimuli at once. This is effectively Context Switching.
David Meyer thinks instead of a bottleneck, a process of adaptive executive control takes place, which schedules task process appropriately to obey instructions about their relative prioritieis and serial order.
David Meyer is optimistic that with training the brain can learn to task-switch more effectively, and there is some evidence that certain simple tasks are amenable to such practice. His research also shows that multitasking releases stress hormones and adrenaline,w hich can cause long term health problems and contributes to the loss of short-term memory.
Russell Poldrack, apsychology professor found that multitasking adversly affects how you learn. even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.
Distracted: Stored in striatum, a region of the brain involved in learning new skills.
Undistracted: Stored in hippocampus, a region involved in storing and recalling information.
We have to be aware that there is a cost to the way that our society is changing, that humans are not built to work this way. We're really built to focus. And when we sort of force ourselves to multitask, we're driving ourselves to perhaps be less efficient in the long run even though it sometimes feels like we're being more efficient. Russell Poldrack
Paying Attention
When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgement about what objects are worthy of our attention.
William James, psychologist wrote at length about the variest of human attention in The Principles of Psychology such as:- Sensorial Attention
- Intellectual Attention
- Passive Attention
James compared our stream of thought to a river, and his observations presaged the cognitive 'bottlenecks' described later by neurologists
On the whole easy simple flowing predominates in it, the drift of things is with the pull of gravity, and effortless attention is the rule. But at intervals an obstruction, a set-back, a log-jam occurs, stops the current, creates an eddy, and makes things temporarily move the other way. - William James
Steady attention is the default condition of a mature mind, an ordinary state undone only by perturbation.
The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgement, character, and will - William James - URL: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-myth-of-multitasking
Highlights
Multitasking might also be taking a toll on the economy. One study by researchers at the University of California at Irvine monitored interruptions among office workers; they found that workers took an average of twenty-five minutes to recover from interruptions such as phone calls or answering e-mail and return to their original task. Discussing multitasking with the New York Times in 2007, Jonathan B. Spira, an analyst at the business research firm Basex, estimated that extreme multitasking — information overload — costs the U.S. economy $650 billion a year in lost productivity. (View Highlight) #✂️
To better understand the multitasking phenomenon, neurologists and psychologists have studied the workings of the brain. In 1999, Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (part of the National Institutes of Health), used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to determine that when people engage in “task-switching” — that is, multitasking behavior — the flow of blood increases to a region of the frontal cortex called Brodmann area 10. (View Highlight) #✂️ #👻 ai highlighted
Discussing his research on National Public Radio recently, Poldrack warned, “We have to be aware that there is a cost to the way that our society is changing, that humans are not built to work this way. We’re really built to focus. And when we sort of force ourselves to multitask, we’re driving ourselves to perhaps be less efficient in the long run even though it sometimes feels like we’re being more efficient.” (View Highlight) #✂️ #👻 ai highlighted
If, as Poldrack concluded, “multitasking changes the way people learn,” what might this mean for today’s children and teens, raised with an excess of new entertainment and educational technology, and avidly multitasking at a young age? Poldrack calls this the “million-dollar question.” Media multitasking — that is, the simultaneous use of several different media, such as television, the Internet, video games, text messages, telephones, and e-mail — is clearly on the rise, as a 2006 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed: in 1999, only 16 percent of the time people spent using any of those media was spent on multiple media at once; by 2005, 26 percent of media time was spent multitasking. (View Highlight) #✂️ #👻 ai highlighted