HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER
Title: The Whole Truth About Multitasking
Competencies: achievement orientation, managing self, self-development
Who benefits: everyone
Consultant Usage: your multitasking can have negative effects on your clients – this content could be useful for self reflection
What’s it about? Baseball is such a slow sport. But when “my†Dodgers are playing and I can receive the game I turn it on. But I also curl up with a good mystery. What I notice frequently is a half-inning ends, they go to commercial, and I look up and don’t have a clue what happened. Yesterday I thought I was watching intensely. My favorite player was on first base. How did he get there? Que paso?
Well technically I have been multitasking. It may only be recreational multitasking, but it has messed up my brain.
While eating my breakfast I watched a fascinating video on the evils of multitasking. I never multitask. I know it is bad for the brain. I have written about this brain killer on several occasions. I found myself in violent agreement with Professor Clifford Ness who presented Multitasking: How It Is Changing the Way You and Your Children Think and Feel.
If you want a one sentence review, here it is: Multitasking screws up your “pay attention†skills.
If you don’t believe that, watch the first 15 minutes of this 35 minute (before Q & A) video. There are three very simple “exercises†you will be asked to watch. Get them all right and you are excused from reading the rest of this post. I got the first one correct. I was sure the answer to the second one was 14 (wrong).
If you are brave enough to try the third exercise (I wasn’t) you are likely to be embarrassed. It looks incredibly simple – but it turns out, the more you multitask in real life, the worse you do on this multitask exercise. If you try it you will either laugh … or cry. There are two important conclusions that are demonstrated by this 15 second clip. 1) High Multitaskers can’t help but think about the tasks they are not doing and 2) High Multitaskers are really, really bad at multitasking.
The professor addresses these three questions: “1) Is multitasking always inefficient? 2) How does chronic multitasking affect thinking, emotion, and social relationships for children and adults? and 3) How can we recover from the negative effects of multitasking?†Since I had a pretty good idea about the first two, I was particularly interested in the third question. I was hoping that he wasn’t going to suggest I joint MTA (Multitaskers Anonymous). He offers two very practical suggestions (you may need to make minor adaptations). He offers a third as well, but it abstract and not likely to be immediately useful.
This is an important video. It is important that you fully understand the impact of multitasking on your productivity, your career, and your personal life. But please, if you have children, watch this video to understand the damaging effects multitasking has on young people. It is absolutely scary. Try to encourage your children to adopt his two practical suggestions.
Before concluding, I want to send out a personal message to my friend and faithful reader Lee. Hey Lee, all those exchanges we have had about “senior moments†and “old timers disease†– turns out we are multitasking and can’t access the mental file we need for information in the moment. Whew! I thought it was more serious than that!
Well that’s it for today. I need to move to my next task. I am the keeper of Envisia Learning Library and I need to get busy making some updates. I am going to put on some of my favorite music (thank you Pandora), set out some non-fattening snacks and begin to add some content to the library.
Catch you later.
Bill Bradley
Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.
