Multitasking?

Working on an assignment and listening to tunes, while watching a TV show, while talking to a friend?  Having a conversation while answering text messages?  There are endless ways these days that we attempt to multitask.

Did you concentrate fully on that assignment, doing the best you could?  Did you catch everything that just happened on that show?   While texting a reply message, did you manage to still give your full attention to the person conversing with you?  (The etiquette of multi-tasking when personal interaction is involved is another issue!)

My assertion is that it is a rare person indeed who can truly multitask - actually performing each of the simultaneous tasks well and with full attention.  All of the rest of us, when we think we are good at multi-tasking, are just kidding ourselves.

Many of the things we try to do at the same time each require our full attention to do well, which is not really possible.  When we think we are multitasking, what we are mostly really doing is "flickering" - skipping back and forth between tasks.   One thing gets our attention at a time, but we alternate that attention between tasks quickly, often without realizing that this is what we are doing, instead of truly multitasking.

Our plugged-in, "information overload" society has contributed to this, as illustrated in this student project:

So, we clearly need to take charge of our technology - instead of letting our tech dominate our lives.

There is also a way we can increase the chances that our multitasking will be productive, maybe even more productive than single-tasking.  This is called "layering" - which is nicely described in this post on 99U:

Layering - Multitasking That Actually Works

In a nutshell, multitasking effectiveness depends on which tasks we decide to pair up.  And essentially, one of the tasks is usually one that we can "layer" on top of the other, sort of in the background, without taking our attention away from the primary task.  For example, listening to music while you are out jogging.

So, we can multitask effectively when we layer "compatible" tasks.  But, should we?  Well, if it makes one of the tasks easier, or go better, sure!

One last point to consider, though - even if having music playing helps us endure a 30-minute jog, for example, it is still probably true that we don't fully concentrate either on the music or on the jog.  The reason the music helps is that, if anything, it distracts us from some of the sensations or thoughts that might accompany our physical activity.  There's nothing wrong with this, but....

I think, to some degree we have trained ourselves to not tolerate focusing on just one thing at a time very well.  In some ways, we have encouraged ourselves to develop some form of ADD.  The art of just focusing on one thing for an extended period of time is becoming rarer and unappreciated.

If you'd like to find out more about this strange concept of actually paying attention to what we are doing, thinking, feeling, hearing, and so on, it's called mindfulness, and you can find out more about it by Googling it, or by starting here:  Mindfulnet.org - What Is Mindfulness?  or by watching their short video: