Are we alone in our inability to multi-task efficiently?

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ToughDiamond
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16 Oct 2017, 9:09 pm

Just that I've been looking into it and there's some evidence that multi-tasking is simply a stupid idea for everybody:

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/201612 ... n-syndrome

"our brains are hardwired to do one thing at a time. When we think we are multi-tasking, we’re really not, Instead, as far as our brains are concerned, we are fully switching back and forth between tasks. Doing that repeatedly tires out the brain and lowers cognitive ability, research shows."

What do y'all think of that? I've always kind of felt that multi-tasking was a mug's game for anybody, but I thought I might just be projecting my own impairment onto the rest of the human race.



garysoneji
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16 Oct 2017, 9:15 pm

I've read a few different studies over the past decade that suggest no one can multitask well; they just poorly do multiple things at once.


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16 Oct 2017, 9:40 pm

I don't think we unable to multi-task, I just think multi-tasking is highly overrated and even maybe unhealthy. If you're doing a bunch of things at once, how can be doing them correctly or doing them well? I've heard some women say you "have* to be a good multi-tasker if you're a mother like they are. Add yet another thing to my list of reasons of why I'm glad I never was one. A mother, I mean.



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17 Oct 2017, 5:59 am

This reminded me of a sign I'd see at a former co-worker's desk. I can't seem to post an image of the sign here, but it's got a picture of a smiling woman drinking a cup of coffee, and the caption beside it says, Drink Coffee! Do Stupid Things Faster With More Energy!

Neither coffee nor any other substance ever helped me better multi-task, but at least when drinking coffee, I do feel like I have more energy and I seem to work faster. I hope they're not "stupid things," though :)


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CubeComet
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17 Oct 2017, 8:26 am

I’m guessing the point of traits like this is not just saying that we suck at multitasking, but we suck at multitasking more than normal. It has its pros and cons, yes.

This makes it pretty hard to improvise or switch tasks when something unexpected happens. I tend to be easily overwhelmed when talking with people because people tend to switch conversation topics every minute. Hell, it’s 5 minutes at most. This can happen in both casual situations or academic based group works. All this while my brain tends to focus on things for an hour or more. It’s pretty confusing . . . So I prefer to communicate in typed text or written words where I can ponder on things more deeply for a longer period of time. I always make long ass posts for that reason.

It can also be an incredible skill in focus in an area. Cal Newport wrote a whole book called Deep Work which features how many famous people managed to gain success by intense focus in one thing. It allowed them to learn rapidly at an incredible level more distracted people don’t have. In the age of the internet, deep work or deep focus is becoming even more and more rare. And so an even more valuable skill in its scarcity.

It makes me a lot more suited to more solitary thinking tasks. That, or at least paired teamwork that involves talking with someone on one subject for maybe an hour straight. Also, that person has to be patient when I stand there silent for a minute thinking of what to reply. My dream type of conversation, I tell ya.



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17 Oct 2017, 8:41 am

No, it's a bad way to work. It makes it impossible to concentrate on anything. Multitasking is really fractured attention.



ToughDiamond
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17 Oct 2017, 11:55 am

CubeComet wrote:
I’m guessing the point of traits like this is not just saying that we suck at multitasking, but we suck at multitasking more than normal. It has its pros and cons, yes.

This makes it pretty hard to improvise or switch tasks when something unexpected happens. I tend to be easily overwhelmed when talking with people because people tend to switch conversation topics every minute. Hell, it’s 5 minutes at most. This can happen in both casual situations or academic based group works. All this while my brain tends to focus on things for an hour or more. It’s pretty confusing . . . So I prefer to communicate in typed text or written words where I can ponder on things more deeply for a longer period of time. I always make long ass posts for that reason.

It can also be an incredible skill in focus in an area. Cal Newport wrote a whole book called Deep Work which features how many famous people managed to gain success by intense focus in one thing. It allowed them to learn rapidly at an incredible level more distracted people don’t have. In the age of the internet, deep work or deep focus is becoming even more and more rare. And so an even more valuable skill in its scarcity.

It makes me a lot more suited to more solitary thinking tasks. That, or at least paired teamwork that involves talking with someone on one subject for maybe an hour straight. Also, that person has to be patient when I stand there silent for a minute thinking of what to reply. My dream type of conversation, I tell ya.


Yes, I often feel I'm more "sticky-brained" than most people. It would be interesting to see some kind of test for this. There's a question on one of the ASD questionnaires that says (something like) "when interrupted from a task, does it take you an unusually long time to resume?" I guess it hinges on that resumption time, or perhaps the degree of stress and fatigue.

My job drove me mad when they started expecting me to focus on two very different kinds of work, flipping from one to the other at the drop of a hat. I was much more efficient and happier when I just had to do the one kind of work. They'd try to talk to me about subject B when I was hyper-focussed on subject A. And it was hard for me to do even the most straighforward task "off the top of my head" - I've said many times that I can barely buy a can of beans without planning it as if it were a bank robbery. I've made some progress with that over the years, but I feel there's still a difference between me and typical-brained people. I still tend to do everything as near-perfectly as I can, or not do it at all, hence my long, detailed posts on WP, even my occasional one-liner has had a lot of work behind it. I make everything into hard work. I know somebody who does the same thing, and I find it quite annoying, but of course I'm observing her from the outside. From the inside of her brain, it makes sense, just as it makes sense to me when I do the same thing. But I also find it annoying how ordinary people do things in such a (seemingly) glib, half-baked way, and I can never understand how they survive when they have such poor focus and attention to detail. When I try to be glib and half-baked, I think I fail more often than most folks do.

Thanks for your posts, folks. I'd say more about those, but it would take me a very long time.



CharlesRooster
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17 Oct 2017, 1:07 pm

I think it might be an issue of switching between tasks


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23 Oct 2017, 4:23 am

there are a tiny number of people who are hardwired to be genuine multitaskers [not just multithreaders], in that their brains can split their functioning into at least two parts, with no loss of efficiency. my sister is one such. I read somewhere that hyper-rememberers [people who never forget anything] are in this elect group, as well. the majority, however, of fluent multitaskers are merely high-iq types with much better general neural efficiency than the rest of us. all the doctors I worked with in the hospital were in this special group.



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23 Oct 2017, 4:40 am

I bet even those proficient in multitasking, are under alot of stress when doing so, even if they don't realize it.



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23 Oct 2017, 4:51 am

EzraS wrote:
I bet even those proficient in multitasking, are under alot of stress when doing so, even if they don't realize it.

the doc's collective motto, was "never let 'em see ya sweat." I can vouch for the fact that mental exertion raises core body temperature just as much as exercise.



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23 Oct 2017, 12:15 pm

People with ADD, ADHD and the like of have multitasking difficulties.


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23 Oct 2017, 12:16 pm

auntblabby wrote:
there are a tiny number of people who are hardwired to be genuine multitaskers [not just multithreaders], in that their brains can split their functioning into at least two parts, with no loss of efficiency. my sister is one such. I read somewhere that hyper-rememberers [people who never forget anything] are in this elect group, as well. the majority, however, of fluent multitaskers are merely high-iq types with much better general neural efficiency than the rest of us. all the doctors I worked with in the hospital were in this special group.

It might make an interesting science project, to do brain scans of people who seem able to very fluently multi-task, and see whether there's any evidence that they're truly dual-core or whether it's just like a good operating system on a single-core computer, i.e. giving the outward appearance of multi-tasking but really just flitting between two jobs.



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23 Oct 2017, 12:22 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:
People with ADD, ADHD and the like of have multitasking difficulties.

Makes sense to me. I guess if focussing at all is hard, then it's even harder to switch focus. I suppose for an Aspie, a similar nightmare would be trying to flip between two tasks which are of no interest to them, given that focussing on that kind of stuff is much harder than focussing on stuff that fascinates them.



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23 Oct 2017, 8:13 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
there are a tiny number of people who are hardwired to be genuine multitaskers [not just multithreaders], in that their brains can split their functioning into at least two parts, with no loss of efficiency. my sister is one such. I read somewhere that hyper-rememberers [people who never forget anything] are in this elect group, as well. the majority, however, of fluent multitaskers are merely high-iq types with much better general neural efficiency than the rest of us. all the doctors I worked with in the hospital were in this special group.

It might make an interesting science project, to do brain scans of people who seem able to very fluently multi-task, and see whether there's any evidence that they're truly dual-core or whether it's just like a good operating system on a single-core computer, i.e. giving the outward appearance of multi-tasking but really just flitting between two jobs.

I read a while back that the true multitaskers all had an unusually dense and thick corpus collosum, that cable that connects the hemispheres.



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23 Oct 2017, 9:13 pm

CharlesRooster wrote:
I think it might be an issue of switching between tasks


That was my first thought as well. Most people who claim to multi-task well seem to be just switching their focus rapidly back and forth. People on the spectrum tend toward perseveration and have a hard time switching from one task to another even at more "normal" speeds, and/or giving up on a task before it's done (or they're exhausted), let alone rapidly shifting back and forth like that.