The Myth of Multitasking (2008) [pdf]
faculty.winthrop.edu
faculty.winthrop.edu
“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again is the very root of judgment, character, and will.”
When people ask me what the point of meditation is, this is pretty much what I tell them. You are training a certain kind of "mental muscle", i.e. the faculty James mentions in this quote.
I know that James, in addition to being a major psychologist and philosopher, studied world religions. That he would express this sentiment so plainly makes me want to find out more about his investigations (since many religious practices have a meditation component), and to see whether James himself advocated meditation.
Obviously (the excellent) William James predates this by some time, but within the context of the modern era, this sort of thing has been discussed long before the Hallowells and Ferrisses of the world made their careers by repackaging old notions.
But in 30 minute increments: 30 minutes heading toward Las Vegas, then 30 minute heading toward San Diego.
Multitasking is not just switching between tasks. It requires tremendous effort and time to achieve it, but it can be done.
There are certainly areas where some level of multitasking can be trained. For some, it's still merely fast switching, and for the gifted few, there's the capacity to become so familiar, competent, and therefore at ease with complex tasks that they become second nature, and that frees up bandwidth for other things.
The problem gets to be that that sort of thing is very challenging, and most people just aren't capable of doing it well, if at all. The level of self-deception surrounding the issue is stratospheric. (We're talking about maybe ~5% of the population.) And, for the most part, it only makes sense to practice in high-workload environments where there may not be the ability to add people to divide the workload (think: some aviation).
I'll pick out the paragraph that sticks with me the most:
> Then again, perhaps we will simply adjust and come to accept what James called “acquired inattention.” E-mails pouring in, cell phones ring- ing, televisions blaring, podcasts streaming—all this may become back- ground noise, like the “din of a foundry or factory” that James observed workers could scarcely avoid at first, but which eventually became just another part of their daily routine. For the younger generation of multi- taskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life. And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detri- ment to individual and cultural well-being. When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of atten- tion rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.
I've recently become very aware of the cognitive load of popup notifications, phone push notifications, etc. I went for a week during which I turned off all of these, and once I turned them on again, I was surprised by how incredibly irritated they made me, not to mention much less productive.
YMMV - I just would like us all to make these decisions consciously for ourselves, rather than passively.
Sounds reasonable. But also consider:
> The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. - F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up", Esquire Magazine (February 1936)