Thursday, March 10, 2011
Multi-tasking reduces productivity, say scientists
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
This is by way of a sincere apology for not responding to all my good friends who write to me and send invitations, via Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and Linkedin and also forward to me, as part of their mailing lists, right and left-wing, pro or anti-Israel stories, streams of crude witticisms (I’m sometimes tempted to tease you with them), beautiful picture series of Capri, Istanbul and US winter scenes, and recorded streams of French and Italian chanteuses and chanteurs. (thank you for the great Only You Can Make The Night Seem Bright!) . When you twit me about not responding, I can only apologize about the days being too short to do the daily tasks and accommodate my writing foibles, much less accepting new ones. Multi-tasking is getting difficult.
When younger, I would multi-task with glee, but that was non-technological. I would travel the office building to talk to difficult people (phone non-answerers) by humbly dropping in, for a minute, or have two lunches in the corporate dining room in one lunch hour. Nowadays you see a young person carrying a laptop or i-Pad, i-Pod, Blackberry and earphone music, multi-tasking all day. College students interviewed find university education less demanding than high school, since more electronics are allowed in classroom, and studying can be substituted by lookup. An Ivy League student claims to never have time to read a full –length book, and will never see Hamlet or King Lear in print, except in a short Notes edition. He will write his paper by cribbing from the summary, and keep his compositions brief. There is no time for him to engage in sustained thought and profound analysis, and he may not be equipped for it, having been brought up in a technologically advanced progressive environment, with all the proper toys.
Interestingly, some subpar schools in poor districts have been brought up to a decent level of accomplishment by energetic young principals, who have introduced one-on-one computers in the classrooms, with word games and entertaining applications as lures. That, of course, can turn the atmosphere in 5th grade from illiteracy to literacy, and, properly guided, will carry into higher grades. Until college, that is where social media reign, keeping students from studying.
On a national level, that means that wealthy American students will turn into less accomplished scientists, researchers and developers than their 3rd World counterparts. I seem to recall that China has turned a 40 percent high school graduation rate in the 1970s into a high 70s rate in the last decade, with well=prepared grads. If you have followed the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua, law professor at Yale, you know how it is done, by denying her children play dates, sleepovers, participation in school plays, TV and computer games, and demanding hours of music practice. Chua threatened, intimidated, called her children stupid and tolerated no resistance. The Chinese attitude is, she claims, that children owe their parents everything, and have to spend their lives repaying. Children are deemed strong, and able to take it, there is no fear of creating a feeling of inferiority, and with it goes also a huge amount of parental time spent (she refused to accept her Caucasian husband’s objections). How does the child survive in school? Based on a Korean musician’s comments – he too had a mother who did not accept any grades k\less than A – you are a loner, somewhat accepted because of the grades, but socially ignored. A Chinese commentator noted that she hated her parents and did not cry at their funerals, another social contract breach, not in our context.
Without going into an evaluation of East v. West, let’s return to the Western multi-tasking review. Obviously the Eastern students develop more technical skills, but not as good social skills for the technical/ research/developer/ integrator careers that we are shooting for, since in manual work we cannot compete with the docile dollar an hour 3rd world laborer.
But will we continue to be the superior tech nation? Is this social media overwhelmed world ruining us? Scientists at MIT’s Picower Institute of learning and Memory study hoe many simultaneous tasks primates can handle, finding that monkeys can distinguish between cats and dogs, and sedans and sports cars, by function. This has to do with neurons in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, of which the primates have 500. Autistic children may not do as well and will have a clash, e.g. when not being able to tell that a green and a blue toothbrush have the same function.
In our business world, true multitasking such as texting and talking on the phone can also cause a clash, and we will not be able to perform top-notch at either task. Even thinking about multitasking can knock off 10 points of one’s IQ, equivalent to losing a night’s sleep. Switching back and forth while solving a complex math problem can take 40 points off one’s score (Journal of Experimental Psychology). The slowdown can cause a vicious cycle of release of stress hormones and adrenaline. Rage at interruptions and interrupters is another byproduct of multi-tasking. If you watch savants at talk shows going at each other without bodily injuries, it is because they have professionally trained themselves to behave.
Life in big cities with constant multi-tasking. is typically stress producing. Doing homework while watching TV is inefficient and stressful, finds Prof. Russell Potrock of UCal. It sends the information directly to the striatum (learning area) and to hypocampus (storage), without involving the prefrontal cortex (analysis). “We are built to focus,” and such splitting of tasks is bad for the child’s development, leading to the attention deficit trait, declares psychiatrist Edward Hallowell. Mother was right all along.
Among the miscreants in our efficiency one might identify a period of recession, right here and now, which puts a dominant problem such as lost job, need for income and housing, and family problems, all squarely into the prefrontal cortex, causing lack of ability to hear discussions and to address issues. It was therefore amazing, during the Clinton years, how the President was able to squarely isolate topics and give them full attention. Nixon lacked this ability; Obama seems to have it. Good for our side. As for us ordinary mortals, we were born to suffer. Only the paranoid can survive in today’s world .without going crazy..
This is by way of a sincere apology for not responding to all my good friends who write to me and send invitations, via Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and Linkedin and also forward to me, as part of their mailing lists, right and left-wing, pro or anti-Israel stories, streams of crude witticisms (I’m sometimes tempted to tease you with them), beautiful picture series of Capri, Istanbul and US winter scenes, and recorded streams of French and Italian chanteuses and chanteurs. (thank you for the great Only You Can Make The Night Seem Bright!) . When you twit me about not responding, I can only apologize about the days being too short to do the daily tasks and accommodate my writing foibles, much less accepting new ones. Multi-tasking is getting difficult.
When younger, I would multi-task with glee, but that was non-technological. I would travel the office building to talk to difficult people (phone non-answerers) by humbly dropping in, for a minute, or have two lunches in the corporate dining room in one lunch hour. Nowadays you see a young person carrying a laptop or i-Pad, i-Pod, Blackberry and earphone music, multi-tasking all day. College students interviewed find university education less demanding than high school, since more electronics are allowed in classroom, and studying can be substituted by lookup. An Ivy League student claims to never have time to read a full –length book, and will never see Hamlet or King Lear in print, except in a short Notes edition. He will write his paper by cribbing from the summary, and keep his compositions brief. There is no time for him to engage in sustained thought and profound analysis, and he may not be equipped for it, having been brought up in a technologically advanced progressive environment, with all the proper toys.
Interestingly, some subpar schools in poor districts have been brought up to a decent level of accomplishment by energetic young principals, who have introduced one-on-one computers in the classrooms, with word games and entertaining applications as lures. That, of course, can turn the atmosphere in 5th grade from illiteracy to literacy, and, properly guided, will carry into higher grades. Until college, that is where social media reign, keeping students from studying.
On a national level, that means that wealthy American students will turn into less accomplished scientists, researchers and developers than their 3rd World counterparts. I seem to recall that China has turned a 40 percent high school graduation rate in the 1970s into a high 70s rate in the last decade, with well=prepared grads. If you have followed the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua, law professor at Yale, you know how it is done, by denying her children play dates, sleepovers, participation in school plays, TV and computer games, and demanding hours of music practice. Chua threatened, intimidated, called her children stupid and tolerated no resistance. The Chinese attitude is, she claims, that children owe their parents everything, and have to spend their lives repaying. Children are deemed strong, and able to take it, there is no fear of creating a feeling of inferiority, and with it goes also a huge amount of parental time spent (she refused to accept her Caucasian husband’s objections). How does the child survive in school? Based on a Korean musician’s comments – he too had a mother who did not accept any grades k\less than A – you are a loner, somewhat accepted because of the grades, but socially ignored. A Chinese commentator noted that she hated her parents and did not cry at their funerals, another social contract breach, not in our context.
Without going into an evaluation of East v. West, let’s return to the Western multi-tasking review. Obviously the Eastern students develop more technical skills, but not as good social skills for the technical/ research/developer/ integrator careers that we are shooting for, since in manual work we cannot compete with the docile dollar an hour 3rd world laborer.
But will we continue to be the superior tech nation? Is this social media overwhelmed world ruining us? Scientists at MIT’s Picower Institute of learning and Memory study hoe many simultaneous tasks primates can handle, finding that monkeys can distinguish between cats and dogs, and sedans and sports cars, by function. This has to do with neurons in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, of which the primates have 500. Autistic children may not do as well and will have a clash, e.g. when not being able to tell that a green and a blue toothbrush have the same function.
In our business world, true multitasking such as texting and talking on the phone can also cause a clash, and we will not be able to perform top-notch at either task. Even thinking about multitasking can knock off 10 points of one’s IQ, equivalent to losing a night’s sleep. Switching back and forth while solving a complex math problem can take 40 points off one’s score (Journal of Experimental Psychology). The slowdown can cause a vicious cycle of release of stress hormones and adrenaline. Rage at interruptions and interrupters is another byproduct of multi-tasking. If you watch savants at talk shows going at each other without bodily injuries, it is because they have professionally trained themselves to behave.
Life in big cities with constant multi-tasking. is typically stress producing. Doing homework while watching TV is inefficient and stressful, finds Prof. Russell Potrock of UCal. It sends the information directly to the striatum (learning area) and to hypocampus (storage), without involving the prefrontal cortex (analysis). “We are built to focus,” and such splitting of tasks is bad for the child’s development, leading to the attention deficit trait, declares psychiatrist Edward Hallowell. Mother was right all along.
Among the miscreants in our efficiency one might identify a period of recession, right here and now, which puts a dominant problem such as lost job, need for income and housing, and family problems, all squarely into the prefrontal cortex, causing lack of ability to hear discussions and to address issues. It was therefore amazing, during the Clinton years, how the President was able to squarely isolate topics and give them full attention. Nixon lacked this ability; Obama seems to have it. Good for our side. As for us ordinary mortals, we were born to suffer. Only the paranoid can survive in today’s world .without going crazy..
Labels: multi-task
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:19 PM 
