Thursday, February 25, 2010
Work Smart: Stop Multitasking and Start Doing One Thing Really Well
Fast Company: "A human's ability to do several things at once is a wonder of biology: it means we can eat a burrito while we walk down the street and listen to music and daydream about the weekend all at the same time. But some kinds of multitasking costs you more time than you save."
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6 comments:
I'm not to happy with this article. Not to say that it didn't make a point, and that the point wasn't good, but that's all it did. Basically this article could be summed up by saying, "Multitasking is bad, don't do it," because it doesn't devote much time to offering ways to decrease the amount of multitasking that we do, which most of us already know is not as efficient than if we devoted all of our time and thought to one task.
I am so on board with this. Often I find that people, namely myself, trying to accomplish, or even think about, more than 1 thing at a time allows both things to suffer, just like the article says. Its very hard to not have your brain attempt to wander, as it is want to do with tasks that might not be the most exciting, but perhaps still require a great deal of attention. I find that I am actually the most productive if I section off my time into doing certain tasks singularly. Even if I come back to something a couple hours later, at least I'm not doing two things at once.
I totally agree with this article. There are certain things that one can do simultaneously, but I think that there are a lot less of these things than we think. I find that when I put my mind to one thing, it gets done a lot faster. We all rush to get things done, and think that if we do more than one thing at a time, things will get done faster, but if you think about it, it takes a good few minutes to really get your mind into a task, and that can become a lot of time wasted.
I do agree with this article for many tasks, especially ones that are in some way new or unique. However, with tasks that are routine or that the person doing them is used to doing them, not all of your focus is being consumed by the task and so doing another is not a problem. In addition, in my Cognitive Psychology, we learned two semi-conflicting arguments that deal with multi-tasking. The first states that each person only has a certain amount of cognitive resources and that would point to the fact that indeed, multi-tasking is bad. However, another argument stated that we can handle the intake of multiple problems at once, but a bottleneck is created in the processing of that information. Only one task can be decided on at a time. This would lead to saying multi-tasking is indeed more efficient as the time it takes to intake the information and formulate possible solutions can overlap. It would only be the choosing of the “correct” solution that would limit the output time.
Theoretically this is correct. I think a lot of people feel they are multi-tasking, but as the article points out you're really not paying much attention to one or both of those tasks. I find myself falling into this trap when I put on music; I notice that I turn the volume down until I can barely hear it only to realize that I don't want music on at all. It's hard to decifer when it's useful to be doing more than one thing at once for piece of mind rather than efficiency, but especially from a management standpoint, it's really hard to concentrate on your work when you're supervising other people.
I think the take-away from this is that it's worth paying attention to when you need all of your cycles, and when you can afford to time-slice. For tasks that require waiting for other people or processing, and don't require full engagement, multitasking is a way to minimize waiting. On the other hand, when working on something that requires focus and careful consideration, multitasking decreases not only efficiency, but also quality. They also don't really address another kind of multi-tasking, using low-brain function time to think over longer-term work. Often, I find that I can use my time walking to and from school or waiting for classes, for example, to think through other plans I need to make or details I need to work out. This sort of multitasking during mundane tasks is, I find, one of the bast ways to keep on top of things.
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