When I found out that one of the big topics of this week is multitasking, I began to think back to last year and all the things I learned about the topic. I remembered that Dr. Fulford had taught about this subject in ETEC 600, so I searched through my old notes to find her take on multitasking. One of the big take away points from Dr. Fulford's lecture was that multitasking is a myth and trying to do it is counter productive. In fact, literature Dr. Fulford referenced (Cherry 2012) suggests that multitasking reduces our productivity by 40% and makes it difficult to ignore distractions.
"Multitasking is like holding everyone's birthday party on the same day- nobody gets very much attention." This quote made me laugh out loud but when I thought about it, it totally makes sense. In life we set aside a time and a place to celebrate people's birthday parties because we want to give special attention to the guest of honor. In the same way, when we work, we should set aside a time and a place to work on a particular project to give special attention to the "guest of honor."
Why do we multitask? When I multitask, I usually do it because I feel overwhelmed with the amount of work that I have to complete and feel the need to finish everything at the same time. Sometimes, I need a break but feel like I don't have the time to take one so I try to do something fun and something less appealing at the same time. However, this behavior has a cost. Researcher Clifford Nass conducted a study on people who multitask and found that high multitaskers were in bad shape. "They look where they shouldn't, and their memory is all sloppy," says Nass. This quote really hit me because over the years I have noticed that my ability to retain facts, names, and new information is much weaker than it was ten years ago. Although I usually brush off that thought, I sometimes think about my two grandfathers who have lost their memory to Alzheimer's Disease and begin to worry if I am coming down with the early stages. However, after reading all this information on multitasking, I'm starting to wonder if I can strengthen my memory by being disciplined, giving each task it's time and place, and being sure to focus on one task at a time. Perhaps if I stop multitasking during my work time and stop opening one hundred browser tabs on my free time, I will be able to focus harder, learn better, and work more productively.
Hi Coby,
ReplyDeleteIt was very interesting learning about someone else’s opinion on this! Dr. Fulford’s analogy of multitasking and attending multiple birthday parties definitely made me chuckle! It is so true and it reminds me of the times when I did have to attend multiple parties, I always ended up feeling guilty for not spending enough time with the people I really wanted to, simply because I didn’t want to miss out on things or didn’t want to offend anyone for not showing up. However, I am sure that just like multitasking, this kind of behavior have negative effect on my relationships, it’s just like those Facebook likes, a “light touch” on other’s life, but no depth/or impact to the relationship. This makes me reflect on not only how I want to approach my relationship with people, but definitely how I want to spread out my tasks during the day. Over the years I can feel that my productivity is sliding but didn’t really have a clue why. Now I can see that trying to multitask excessively is taking a tool on my work product. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on multitasking this week. -Kitty
Hi Kitty,
ReplyDeleteWhat I really found surprising is that multitasking can make topics harder to remember if they are being learned while doing something else. Just as you noticed your productivity slipping, I noticed my ability to remember things I've learned slipping. I have been making a conscious effort this week to do no more than one or two things at a time and to minimize the amount of browser tabs I have open. I hope this will slowly help me to stop multitasking and start focusing more on each task.
Aloha,
Coby
Hey there Coby,
ReplyDeleteI loved that quote when you said ""Multitasking is like holding everyone's birthday party on the same day- nobody gets very much attention." First of all it made me laugh out loud and then it made complete sense the more I thought about it.
Prior to this week's readings I thought I was great at multitasking! After the readings? I think I better reevaluate myself and take a serious look at when I do things and how I do them. Every day after work I ask myself "why am I at work until 5pm each day trying to lesson plan for the next day of teaching?" Now I know why I am spending an incredible amount of time in my classroom each day. I need to quit with the multitasking and set myself up for success and focus on a single task at a time! It will take some serious work for me to get to this point.
Thanks for allowing me to reflect and for sharing!
-Kaulana H
Great Post Coby! I like your thoughts on multitasking being something that you do when you feel overwhelmed with too much work. This is actually something that I reflected on a bit in my own blog entry too. My thoughts were in the lines of "Do we multitask because we as a society have gotten so used to being distracted or because we our lives have become so ridiculously busy that we have no choice at all but do do a million things at the same time?" Quite frankly, I think it may be a bit of both and your thoughts about multitasking in order to get things done faster quite fits in here! I honestly do think that as a fast paced society, we have almost gotten to the point of taking laser focused, individual attention for granted since we have way too many distractions (cell phones, laptops, other devices) and the more distractions we have, the more work is actually added on to our to do list! I guess this may support your claim where you mention that you have a hundred tabs open while working! I'm guilty of that too!
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, all those devices, no matter how much they may have complicated our lives, they have indeed brought in a lot of value and demand our time and attention in order to get the many things done within a certain time frame. I don't really agree that multitasking is a myth. Some people are just naturally gifted at doing many things at once but since it certainly isn't the way to give something our undivided attention (and also since we cannot really completely eliminate all distractions, practically speaking), we need to figure out a way to use these many distractions to our advantages or atleast implement a system where we harness mostly its benefits and minimize its disadvantages. I'm still working on figuring that out for myself!
-Shil