David Mackies Blue Brain

The things that make my friends just shake their heads.

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Human Multi-Tasking a Myth?

Firstly ArrrrrrrrrrrrrGH having ninemsn.com.au as the default homepage of Internet Exploiter 8 might become very scary. The first few features were from The Australian Women's Weekly and Cosmopolitan I guess that is okay but hopefully not habit forming :)

Getty ImagesOne thing at a time

Pamela Allardice

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Multi-tasking is an easy habit to get hooked on, but — ironically — it means you end up doing less, not more.

"If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it," goes the saying. Being perpetually busy — a type A personality who can check e-mail, fold laundry, send a text message, and cook dinner, all at once — is a state that modern technology supports and that society encourages as something of a status symbol. In fact, the opposite may be true: multitasking causes the brain to make more mistakes.

According to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doing two or more things at once is a recipe for inefficiency; plus, the more you multitask, the worse you are at it.

Robert Crane has coved this on his blog in the past Here and Here

But I Have a new spin and while no actual evidence here is was happens with me…

If I’m trying to work on a computer I MUST have the TV on or I will Surf the Internet for crap (which Explains the things in my head and on this blog) but if the TV is on then I seem to have much more focus.

So excuse me while I turn back on the Scream Awards so I can spec a server to take to a Virtualization Day next week held by SMBiT Professionals Sydney.

Current front runner is an ML300 G6 both sockets filled and as much memory as I can afford right now, then fill to a fully spec’d 144GB capacity later this will be our DEV box for a while. Now two ML 330’s would be great for clustering but that is just greedy and dreaming right now.

Comments

Robert Crane said:

David,

When you have the TV on you are not really multi-tasking as you don't NEED to pay attention to it. It some ways it is similar perhaps to people who have music on in the background. An interesting study found that if you want to improve you retention of information or a subject you should listen to Mozart I believe. Here are some articles on that score:

http://skepdic.com/mozart.html

jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/.../HowMusicaffectsConcentrat.html

I would suggest that perhaps the TV plays the same role for yourself. However, I would challenge you to try other methods of improving your concentration by perhaps playing music to see whether that does in fact have a greater effect.

In the end I see your work and the TV actually not being true 'multi-tasking' as there is no real 'need' to concentrate on the TV. I will therefore still strongly content that the ability to multi-task is a myth and all that it is in effect is task switching, which in most cases makes you far more ineffective.

Thanks

Robert Crane

# November 8, 2009 8:55 AM