Of Course I Can Do Too (sic)Things at Once!
I meant to write this article in January, but, like so many things I intend to do each day, it didn’t get done. I wasn’t sure I knew why until I started, again, and again, and again, re-reading all the sources, making many of the same notes. I was interested each time I began. I thought I just must have been too busy to pull it all together.
Then, I looked at my massive stack (yes, several pages) of To Do Lists. Many repeated things the others said, but none had a great big line of accomplishment drawn through it. Yes, I’d worked on most of the things on the lists, often at the same time as working at something else, but so little seemed to get done. What was wrong with me?
After reviewing my notes and reflecting on years of nagging my husband to do more than one thing at a time and watching helplessly as he focused on each item as it went from rapid start to surprisingly rapid completion, I realized that I’ve become a victim of multi-tasking.
Some will say I am a woman of a certain age. While I can’t deny my age is certain (I’ve a birth certificate to prove it), I can say that age has little to do with it. When Peter Meyer of Rush University Medical Center set out a decade ago to study the role of hormonal change in women reporting deteriorating short-term memory, he found that hormones weren’t the guilty parties. Instead he noted that prolonged multi-tasking or ‘’role overload’’ was the primary cause of forgetfulness.
David E. Meyer of the University of Michigan has observed that intensive multi-tasking over a long period of time can lead to a shorter attention span, poorer judgment and impaired memory. (Once the lawyers have done with the tobacco companies, will computer, pager and cell-phone manufacturers be next in the class action queue?)
While the ‘’prolonged period’’ may have something to do with age (namely, if I’m older, I’ve probably been addicted for longer), multi-tasking smites old and young alike. While we may never know the full impact of multi-tasking on the young (as we’re unlikely to find a sufficiently large group of 14 year olds willing to forego technology for long enough to conduct a proper study), some observations have be made. A survey of students at St. Petersburg (FL) High School showed that 95% of students have cell-phones and nearly 100% of those who have them bring them to school. Of those, 90% acknowledged they disobeyed the school’s policy on cell-phone use, primarily by text-messaging during class. In other words, more than four-fifths of students admitted to multi-tasking while learning.
A Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation study showed that girls are more likely to media multi-task (use more than 1 medium at a time – for example, reading while texting or listening to music while surfing the internet) than boys. (Which may explain my husband’s immunity to the multi-tasking bug??)
In a review of 50 studies on learning and technology published in January 2009 in Science, Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles analyzed one study that showed that students encouraged to use the internet during lectures retained much less of the information presented to them by the teacher and did less well on an exam after the lecture than students focusing solely on the speaker. Another study showed that students watching CNN without the text stream across the bottom of the page remembered more of what the anchor said than those shown both the anchor and the text stream.
But multi-tasking always made me feel so productive! What was really going on?
A 2006 UCLA study showed that although one can learn while multi-tasking, the information learned is much less flexible, preventing extrapolation from one situation to another. During multi-tasking our brains are switching between tasks, rather than truly performing two tasks at once. The switch may be as short as a quarter-second, but, if you’re traveling at 70 miles an hour while talking on your cell-phone, that quarter second is worth 25 feet, and 25 feet is more than enough to measure the distance between life and death. As technology enables us to have more things ‘’switched on’’ at one time, our brains are actually switching off.
The multi-tasking part of the brain is just behind that spot on your forehead that you bang against the wall. It’s called the prefrontal cortex and is the bit nicknamed ‘’the executive’’. It controls task assessment, prioritizing and assignment of resources to perform the tasks. The executive also notes the point at which tasks are interrupted so we know where to return to complete them. Sadly, it is also the part of the brain that suffers most from prolonged stress of the kind that comes from the overwhelmed feeling of intensive multi-tasking.
That same stress kills brain cells in another part of the brain, the hippocampus. That’s the bit that is critical to the formation of new memories and the learning and retention of new skills.
But surely it’s just a matter of getting better at multi-tasking by working harder at it? Sorry, no. If you find multi-tasking stressful, then, by the very nature of what that stress does to your brain, you’re never going to get better at it.
Multi-tasking works when tasks are automatic – like eating and reading the paper or singing while showering. Try doing two new things at once or even focusing intently on a familiar task while focusing less intently on another familiar task, like running through your cabaret act in the shower, and you may find the hot water’s gone before you’ve got the suds out of your hair. As we expend energy trying to make things more ‘’automatic’’ so we can perform them while doing other things, they will first become performed less well and then, if we do succeed in some degree of automation, they will become vanilla – lacking in creativity, humor, innovation or spontaneity.
Ever notice how your creativity rises when you are away from the workplace and in a new environment? Chances are, you are doing many fewer things at once. I always find new ideas come to me at trade fairs, where, unless I am with I client, I must stand ‘’at the ready’’ looking as if I’m anticipating the arrival of the next client and doing little else. The last few shows, I’ve surreptitiously glanced at my Blackberry during the quieter moments and, whoosh – the creative moments vaporized.
So, with technology and the multi-tasking it almost inevitably breeds unlikely to go away (and would we want them to?), things could get pretty hum drum, right? Wrong! The keys are, firstly, to learn when multi-tasking is appropriate and to deny its harmful incursions into our lives at other times.
Setting aside time for traditional, non-electronic games time is a great way to begin. Selecting games that restore and develop the faculties that multi-tasking undermines is also important. Find games designed to build brain power, enhance memory or encourage creativity.
Finally, and this may well merit another article, I also believe that multi-tasking, in some ways, attempts to compensate for the social interaction we miss in our lives – we talk on the phone while baking cookies; we check Facebook while on a conference call; we pick up a text message while driving to work, alone, in our car. So much of our lives could now be lived in complete isolation, thanks to technology. How often do we see the folks at the end of our technological connection? For how long do we see them?
Guest bedrooms in the South used to be painted yellow, as the bright color was thought to discourage a lengthy stay (i.e., bordering on a month or so!). Now, we’re lucky if any of us use our guest rooms for more than extra storage. What’s wrong with us?
Play more together; multi-task less and see how abundantly your life will bloom. And, if games aren’t the best way to start, you need to come tell me, at my kitchen table, why that’s so….cause I’m off the techno-garble and on to focus, purpose and remembering who you are when I meet you the next day at the shop down the street.
