From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed May 08 2002 - 19:12:11 MDT
In reply to: Emlyn O'regan
(oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Wed May 08 2002 - 01:42:21 MDT
> We don't even do multitasking well. What is the cost
for a human to switch
from one task to another, especially when there is a
lot of context? Huge!
When you are in the middle of a complex cognitive
task, how happy are you to
stop where you are, do something else for a while,
then come back to the
task? If you have to, how much time do you lose in
trying to reform the
context of the task, ie: trying to remember what the
hell you were doing? >
I can recall being able to multitask much better when
I was much younger. I think part of that is the fact
that my brain may no longer be as competent at
juggling more than one task, due to aging, but a big
part may also be that young people do not think in a
very integrated way to begin with. When you can
easilly separate mental tracks, then it's easier to
multitask. When everything is integrated, or at least
cognitively bound in various ways, it takes a real
effort to focus on a particular track, ignoring all
the side trails. Trying to handle two tracks
independently requires your letting go of the
integration. I do note, however, that I can move more
quickly and easilly between sequentially interrupted
tasks now than when I was younger, which is possibly a
payoff of the same integration.
I've noticed that, like the example you gave of
someone who had essentially different skins for
different activities, each unaware of the other,
people often seem unaware just how badly they are
multitasking, as the different states block awareness
of each other to some extent. Many's the time I've
watched some cashier trying to total an order or make
change and also simultaneously answer someone else's
question about an unrelated matter. The net result
invariably takes several times as long as doing the
tasks sequentially.
My boss at work used to stress surf constantly in the
early '90's. He still does, but has mellowed out - or
burned out, more likely - adrenal glands probably shot
to hell, cortisol holes all through his cortex. He
would have literally 2/3's of the work force clustered
in front of his desk all day long. He would start to
sign some invoice, stop in mid-stream to pick up the
phone, pause to listen to a question from his captive
audience, pick up a paper off his desk and study it
intently for a second, yell out the door at the front
office clerk, and six more unrelated activities, while
half of his signature still waited for him on the
invoice.
Every couple of minutes, he would catch himself, or
realize that someone had been standing there unmoving
for five minutes, or - much worse - was actually no
longer listening(!) or watching his show. Then he
would be in that unfortunate's face, impatient that
they had lost the thread, "YES??!!". Of course, he
had long since lost any inkling of what they were
there for, so that meant they had to bring him back up
on signing the invoice. He might manage two more
letters of his name, and then off onto another track.
Average time waiting was probably twenty minutes for a
ten-second answer. I figure that overall I was
working at about 5% efficiency during that period,
mostly due to his bizarre mismanagement.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Shopping - Mother's Day is May 12th!
http://shopping.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:13:55 MST