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Do you work more effectively when you are focused on one project or when you are working on several projects at once?
Do you gain or lose productivity when you multitask?
I have addressed this issue in several prior posts (here and here), arguing that the therapy culture seems to have invented “multitasking” because it did not know how to treat people who could not concentrate.
Lack of focus and concentration might be a function of depression or demoralization, or it might simply refer to people who used to be called scatterbrained.
By inventing the concept of multitasking and proclaiming it a valuable quality, the culture was trying to rebrand the problem and, thereby, by waving its magic verbal wand, to make it go away. Or better, to help you to feel good about it.
Now multitasking is going the way of other efforts to transform the culture by changing the way we label things. It is being done in by science.
Scientists have studied the efficiency of people who multitask and compared it with that of people who focus on one task at a time. They have discovered, as the New York Times’s Freakonomics blog reports, that people who multitask are less effective and less efficient. Link here.
The authors of the new study make one recommendation to help you to overcome your tendency to multitask: rigorous scheduling.
Organizing your time, dedicating chunks of time to single projects, and sticking with a project until you complete it… these will help you to work more effectively and more efficiently.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
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4 comments:
TO: Dr. Schneiderman, et al.
RE: Multi-Tasking....
Do you work more effectively when you are focused on one project or when you are working on several projects at once? -- Stuart Schneiderman
....has its place.
When writing computer code or dealing with a balky server, I prefer to stay focused....until I have to 'come up for air'.
When working the 4ID(M) TAC....where pandemonium reigns....multi-tasking is essential if you want to stay alive and win the air-land battle. On the field of battle, 'target fixation', i.e., staying totally focused on one thing, is deadly....to them that are so focused they lose track of someone targeting THEM.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, AND running. -- Marine Corps Rules for Gunfighting]
The research focuses on the difference between judges who are working on one trial at a time and judges who are working on several different trials at the same time.
As the paper says: "Descriptive evidence suggests that judges
who keep fewer trials active and wait to close the open ones before starting new ones, dispose
more rapidly of a larger number of cases per unit of time. In this way, their backlog remains
low even though they receive the same workload as other judges who juggle more trials at
any given time."
I will leave it to others to find the correct military analogy, but it is certainly true that a judge working on one case is engaging in a number of different activities as part of his work.
TO: Dr. Schneiderman
RE: I Have No Doubt....
As the paper says: "Descriptive evidence suggests that judges
who keep fewer trials active and wait to close the open ones before starting new ones, dispose
more rapidly of a larger number of cases per unit of time. In this way, their backlog remains
low even though they receive the same workload as other judges who juggle more trials at
any given time." -- Stuart Schneiderman
....that such is the case. As I stated earlier, focus is a good think when it comes to mental gymnastics. It has its place....in the computer industry as well as courts of law. BUT there are places where such 'focus' can get you—and possibly others—'killed'. In a very final manner.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[If you can't do five things at once, we can't use you here. -- G3 (Ops) 4ID(M), a.k.a. Director TAC]
P.S. I was his deputy. If he wasn't around, I was supposed the CG's hand while he 'operated'.....
As I told the officer who was relieving me, when he asked, "Is it ALWAYS like THIS?"
I replied, "It doesn't get any BETTER than THIS." [Note: Taken from a popular Old Milwaukee beer commercial from the mid-80s.]
TO: All
RE: A 'Graphic' Example....
....of Target Fixation, i.e., failure to multi-task.
Ever see that movie Saving Private Ryan?
Remember the scene from the final battle for the bridge where the Americans just killed a Tiger tank by immobilizing it and then throwing grenades down the tank commander's hatch to kill the crew?
There are about four paratroopers standing around on the tank, gloating over their victory. Meanwhile, off in a side street, the SS troops have drawn up a 20-mm automatic cannon.
The paratroopers, all 'focused' on their tank prize don't see it and IT turns them all into so much freshly ground meat.
That's 'focus' on the battlefield for you.
What's my point? That focus has it's place, in programming, while dividing the Law of the Land, in surgery, etc. But not EVERYWHERE. Especially in fields involving 'conflict', e.g., football, soccer, basketball, combat.
Hope that helps.
Regards.
Chuck(le)
[Shoot. Move. Communicate. -- Army Credo for Combat]
P.S. And do it all at once, as moving targets are harder to hit.
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