A recent New York Times article, "Multitasking Can Make You Lose ... Um ... Focus," highlights this increasing trend of multitasking and adds some evidence from psychologists and neuroscientists to show that, after a certain point, multitasking hinders our efficiency. It is especially detrimental to our efficiency when we combine activities not meant to be combined. For example, according to the articleour reaction times are slower behind the wheelif we are texting than if we are "drunk or stoned."
I couldn't help but read this article and think, "Well ... duh." Flipping back and forth between activities is a fact as old as time for our generation. Even as little kids, we went straight from soccer practice to karate to piano lessons, etc. These days, iTunes lets us change the music any time we want, leading to a trend known as "Music ADD."
I'm not trying to make a direct scientific comparison between flipping through hundreds of channels on digital cable and ADD, but there are some similarities. Everything has become a distraction from everything else, and when we do this in a productive way, we mask it under the name "multitasking." But doing 10 things at once is certainly not limited to times when we're working. I can't even procrastinate single-mindedly anymore; I have to check the real news while checking Facebook while Blitzing while watching YouTube videos. Oh, look, they changed the photos on the Dartmouth homepage.
This condition isn't our fault; it's the fault of the convenience laid before us. If we can easily do two things at once, then why not? Three? Sure. Four? Hmm. The effect snowballs until we find our attention split more ways than we can count.
We've all been giving into this temptation to multitask for so long that we have lost the ability to turn it off. Even when we have nothing to do or only one piece of reading, there's still the feeling in the backs of our minds that there's something else we should be doing. Whether it's productive or not, that feeling draws our attention away from our current task. When our current task is the most important one that we have, though, this addiction to multitasking hurts.
So if this affliction is so widespread, what are we to do? Well, besides God-like self-control and prescription drugs, there doesn't seem to be a clear answer. Here, we all lead busy lives, and we have good reason for thinking that we always do have something else more productive that we could be doing. But as much as we might like to pretend otherwise, we really do have times when we don't have anything better we should be doing, and we need to block out the thoughts that tell us to be more productive and do more. In such a situation, the only appropriate thing to do, as difficult as it may be, is just to let go and slowly build back up from one singular task to an appropriate number, taking care not to multitask too much, too fast.
On that note, I have some Blitzes I've been ignoring. And I'm hungry. Good thing there are Blitz terminals in Novack.
