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ORIGINAL: MercTech

But, is it multitasking or the inability to focus on the task at hand.

All the studies of "multitasking" show that performance degrades when it is part of multitasking.

quote:

ORIGINAL: MercTech

But, is it multitasking or the inability to focus on the task at hand.

All the studies of "multitasking" show that performance degrades when it is part of multitasking.

quote:

ORIGINAL: MercTech

But, is it multitasking or the inability to focus on the task at hand.

All the studies of "multitasking" show that performance degrades when it is part of multitasking.

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ORIGINAL: jlf1961
...and I can multitask fairly well without any appreciable decline in accuracy.

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ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1

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ORIGINAL: jlf1961
...and I can multitask fairly well without any appreciable decline in accuracy.

But you are of the 'older' generation jlf.
With or without ADD/HD, we were taught the basics and the mechanics behind the subjects we were taught at school.
That doesn't seem to happen these days.

It reminds of the the movie "Wall-E" where the humans evolve to just learn how to press the buttons and nothing much else.
Sadly, I see our 'modern' world coming to that with the coming generations.

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ORIGINAL: jlf1961
Is that a nice way of saying I am older than dirt?

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ORIGINAL: FelineRanger

There's a very simple and well known test of the human ability to multitask. In 1996, the University of Toronto proved with 669 drivers who used cell phones behind the wheel that driving (already a complex task itself) seriously degrades. In fact, those who used phones behind the wheel were as impaired as people with .1 blood alcohol content (.08 is the legal limit now). The results of that study have been duplicated with varying sample sizes all around the world since. This is probably the most extreme example, but it still shows clearly that humans need to focus on a single task from beginning to completion in order to get it right.

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ORIGINAL: littlewonder

...I made it a point though to my boss that if he wanted a project completed on time and correctly then he would have to understand that my brain can only handle so much at a time and therefore some things will will have to wait. We together created a task list for myself and others on our team where they submit projects and issues, set a priority and a due date if one is required. This way it's more orderly and organized.

I know many offices are not able to be set up like that but after my former job there was just no way I was going to get into another chaotic and crazy, fast paced job with tons of things going on at once. I just find it ends up causing crashes and breakdowns within the office and with the work that is supposed to get done. I like organization.

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ORIGINAL: sloguy02246

The obituary section in the 11/5/13 Chicago Tribune had a column written by Steve Chawkins about the passing of Stanford University professor Clifford Nass (1958-2013). Nass had studied the interactions of humans and computers for decades and this morphed into the area of multitasking when he became a “dorm dad” in 2007.

From the article:

“He was caught off-guard when one of his students explained why she was texting her boyfriend just down the hall. ‘It’s more efficient,’ she said.
Then there was a familiar site Mr. Nass continued to find astonishing. In lounges, in libraries, just about everywhere, he gazed at a legion of the perennially plugged-in: They chatted on cell phones, scanned Facebook, watched videos, blasted out tweets, and maybe thumbed through a calculus text, all at once.
’I thought, wow, that’s awesome,’ he told the Boston Globe in 2011. ‘What do they know that I don’t know and how can I be like that?’ The answers surprised him.

After several years of studies, Mr. Nass and other Stanford researchers came to some disturbing conclusions. They found that the heaviest multitaskers – those who invariably said they could focus like laser beams whenever they wanted – were terrible at various cognitive chores, like organizing information, switching between tasks, and discerning significance. ”They’re suckers for irrelevancy,’ he said. ‘Everything distracts them.’

More worrisome to Mr. Nass was his finding that people who regularly jumped into four or more information streams had a tougher time concentrating on just one thing even when they weren’t multitasking. By his estimate, ‘the top 25 percent’ of Stanford’s students were in that category. In a 2011 lecture at the university, Mr. Nass said writing samples from freshman multitaskers showed a tendency toward shorter sentences and disconnected paragraphs. ‘We see less complex ideas, he said. ‘They’re living and writing in a staccato world.’

He told PBS’s Frontline in 2009, ‘You’d see someone multitasking and go, “Ha ha ha, those wacky college kids – OK, they’ll grow out of it.” And then you start looking around and go, “Wait a minute, they growing into it, not out of it.” We could essentially be undermining the thinking ability of our society. We could essentially be dumbing down the world.’ “


For me personally, multitasking has never worked well. I have always chosen to avoid multitasking in favor of creating a “Master List” where I list all the things I need to do, prioritize them, and then work through the list one by one.
Anyone else’s views on the subject of multitasking are welcome.