In our current, modern, lives — where we are ruled by our still untamed electronic frontier — we are led to believe more is more and less is not enough.
Instead of concentrating on one thing as our ancestors did — making a fire, milking the cows, mowing the lawn — we are now expected to do three things simultaneously and do them all well.
This push to do everything at the same time is called Multitasking and scientific research is beginning to prove that doing more than one thing at a time divides us, shears away our attention and actually creates messy work in the end:
“Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the
chances of mistakes,” said David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and
director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan.
“Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of
our ability to process information.”
The human brain, with its hundred billion neurons and hundreds of
trillions of synaptic connections, is a cognitive powerhouse in many
ways. “But a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two
things at once,” said René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the
Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University.
participants were given two tasks and were asked to respond to sounds
and images. The first was to press the correct key on a computer
keyboard after hearing one of eight sounds. The other task was to speak
the correct vowel after seeing one of eight images.
The researchers said that they did not see a delay if the participants
were given the tasks one at a time.
But the researchers found that
response to the second task was delayed by up to a second when the
study participants were given the two tasks at about the same time.
In many daily tasks, of course, a lost second is unimportant. But one
implication of the Vanderbilt research, Mr. Marois said, is that
talking on a cellphone while driving a car is dangerous. A one-second
delay in response time at 60 miles an hour could be fatal, he noted.
This push to be “on top of things” by doing too many things creates a
white noise experience in the brain where priorities are equalized and
perspective is minimized.
The result is an ongoing and never-ending buzz that cannot be discerned
or condemned because the quivering emotional electricity is coming at
you from everywhere and nowhere and so you live in a constant state of
consider myself an expert multitasker. I can write, listen to iTunes,
watch the news and listen to the radio all at the same time. Am I truly
taking in all those information sources or do I unwittingly only tune
in one source at a time?
As the world becomes noisier and faster
and open workspaces become the norm — we seek ways to internalize our
minds. We disappear into our iPods. We chat on the phone while driving.
We read the newspaper while carrying on a morning conversation over the
Are we better for this ability to pretend to simultaneously do well
Or are we only deceiving our employers and ourselves by taking on more
than we can prophetically accomplish?
As a person who claims the ability to multitask, I can tell you those
around me do not appear to share my talent.
I do not need a car. I live in a Walking City.
Everything I need is within a mile of my home. I walk everywhere.
I promise you those in cars who talk on their cellular phones while
driving do not see me — or anyone else around them — crossing the
Those drivers are completely unaware and uncaring unless and until it
is too late to realize the tragedy of the myth of multitasking.