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The Straits Times
Jan 25, 2012
One thing at a time - multi-tasking is a myth


(KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Every modern office worker knows the drill: the email queue is full, the telephone is ringing and the boss is bearing down on your desk from across the open-plan office. Multi-tasking is the order of the day.

Distractions prompt the thought to cut yourself off to work in peace for a while. There is little chance of that in the current working environment which demands the ability to keep several balls in the air at the same time.

Professor Dirk Windemuth, a health and safety at work expert working in accident insurance in Berlin, has little regard for this attitude. Rather do things one at a time and do them properly, is his view. Employees should not deceive themselves into thinking that they achieve more in the same time merely by carrying out several different tasks at the same time, he says. 'That's a fundamental mistake.'

People are simply not built for multi-tasking, by contrast with computers, which these days frequently have four processors to carryout several tasks in parallel. The human brain is designed for mono-tasking and has to jump backwards and forwards between different tasks - and that takes up time and energy.

For this reason, juggling tasks is ineffective. Workers trying to do several things at the same time take longer, make more mistakes and are more stressed at the end of the day, which results in a decline in performance.

'You perform worse and concentration declines,' Prof Windemuth says. The danger is that workers lose concentration when they have to carry on a phone conversation as well and this can lead to having to ask for the information all over again to clear up misunderstandings.

Someone working on a presentation, and trying to deal with their emails at the same time, takes more time than someone who carries out these tasks one at a time, Prof Windemuth says, citing his research.

The interruptions caused by emails can be fatal for a productive train of thought, in the view of Anja Baethge, a psychologist at the University of Leipzig. 'Where was I now?' is the question that arises, as the staff member is forced to backtrack to recover lost ground.

In addition, multi-tasking increases the stress level, as staff feel themselves under increasing time pressure if the number of tasks starts piling up in their in-tray, said Ms Baethge, who has drawn up a study on the issue for the German government.

Prof Windemuth sees the flood of information coming from mobile phones, emails, messenger and chat programs, as well as social networking sites like Facebook, as putting workers under increasing pressure to have their eye on a range of inputs.

Distractions have to be reduced, if the main work is not to suffer. One way of doing this is switching off the on-screen pop-ups that flag up that an email has arrived, Prof Windemuth advises. Instead of reading the new message immediately, office workers should discipline themselves to go through their inbox four or five times a day and deal with correspondence in batches.

Another trick is to have a 'quiet hour,' during which a colleague deals with any distractions. 'During this period, someone else picks up the phone, so that you can concentrate on tasks that take a bit longer,' he says.

Simply dropping everything is the wrong reaction, unless you're a doctor in the emergency unit, Ms Baethge says. It is essential to deal with interruptions in an appropriate way, 'for example by finishing the sentence you are writing before picking up the phone, otherwise the idea is gone.'
I guess men knew it all along... Try peeing and having a conversation without making a mess! LOL! Especially stressful when the attendant stares at you...

But women can do her nails, bitch about her day in the office to you, update facebook, and if you dare change the channel to soccer, all hell will break lose until you change it back to her favourite Korean drama. And you thought she not watching!

(25-01-2012, 06:24 PM)Jared Seah Wrote: [ -> ]I guess men knew it all along... Try peeing and having a conversation without making a mess! LOL! Especially stressful when the attendant stares at you...

But women can do her nails, bitch about her day in the office to you, update facebook, and if you dare change the channel to soccer, all hell will break lose until you change it back to her favourite Korean drama. And you thought she not watching!

LOL!

There's actually more research to say men's hormones are the cause of all the world's problems. Dare not copy/paste it otherwise get whacked cos most of the forumers here are.....men! Tongue
Most people can multitask. i.e. Poo and read papers/magazine in the toilet.
Quote:People are simply not built for multi-tasking, by contrast with computers, which these days frequently have four processors to carryout several tasks in parallel. The human brain is designed for mono-tasking and has to jump backwards and forwards between different tasks - and that takes up time and energy.

Not entirely true.

Originally, computers had only one CPU (processor) and I believe it was modelled after our human brain. Although it appeared to be multi-tasking, it wasn't really so, but more a system of scheduling, priorities of interrupts,... From wiki,

In computing, multitasking is a method where multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is actively executing instructions for that task. Multitasking solves the problem by scheduling which task may be the one running at any given time, and when another waiting task gets a turn. The act of reassigning a CPU from one task to another one is called a context switch. When context switches occur frequently enough the illusion of parallelism is achieved. Even on computers with more than one CPU (called multiprocessor machines), multitasking allows many more tasks to be run than there are CPUs.

So, if you want to achieve multi-tasking (or at least give the illusion), you have to re-learn it back from how a CPU works (now they are giving back what they took from humans) ie. you need a proper system of scheduling and interrupt priorities Big Grin

Intention well received but I think the author is referring to multiple core computers. There may be a single or multiple set of instruction or cache which will enhance multitasking. So in other words, a quad core pc can run your matlab simulation while you play war of Warcraft at the same time. It is like a department head maintaining a list of action items to his four subordinates to increase efficiency of the task to be completed.
Big Toe,

Ah! It's the illusion of multi-tasking... When done with poo (it's more a reflex than task), we still sit and read the papers until someone screams they need to bomb Pearl Harbour too!

Guess what? We discover our legs were numb from the prolonged "sitting"... Help!

We think we are reading, but it's our sanctuary. If we go out, we will be told to clear the rubbish, walk the dog, mop the floor, buy the groceries... Yuks!