Multitasking: Just How Good Are We?
I read with interest an article regarding a Stanford University study on multitasking. (Read it here
.) Like most people in my age bracket, I was taught early on to do one thing and complete it before moving on to the next. With the absence of cell phones, the Internet, Facebook, and a lot of other modern information streams that wasn’t too difficult–provided I had the self-discipline to turn off the radio and TV.
Fast forward a few years to the contemporary world. Today we are inundated with non-stop streams of information coming at us from all sides. The old saw about men and television is that men don’t want to know what is on TV, they want to know what else is on TV. In other words, men don’t just sit and watch one thing. They constantly click the remote to other channels (or games) to see if they are missing something that might be better. Of course, I’ve learned that men aren’t the only ones affected by that virus. Women do it too.
The problem is that as information streams multiply, the remote virus seems to spread. We seem to feel an irresistible urge to mentally “change the channel” every so often. We seem to feel a need to know what is going on in the world (Internet), in the lives of our friends (Facebook), and even in the lives of people we haven’t seen in years or wouldn’t pick up the phone to call. In fact, there is even an urge to know what is going on in the lives of people we’ve never even met (Twitter).
Of course, wanting to keep up is not all bad. The Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and the like have done a lot of good: making us aware of important events (9/11), providing us with vital information (Google), reconnecting us with old friends, and even allowing families separated by distance to continue to be part of each other’s lives. To some extent, these technologies are the currency of doing business in the 21st century and I’ve enjoyed all those benefits.
However, these technologies also raise a number of questions:
How does our fascination with these information streams affect us?
Do these things distract us from that which is more important?
Does all this information enable to do our work better or distract us from getting the job done?
Is the ability to multitask as valuable as it is thought to be?
The Stanford study seems to indicate that multitasking is highly overrated. People who are heavy multitaskers seem to have difficulty focusing on the task at hand and ignoring the extraneous.
I’m not ready to pronounce multitasking as entirely negative but studies like this one give me pause. Pause, it would seem, is a good thing. Try it next time the urge hits to “change the channel.”