January 27, 2008

Time to slow down on the multitasking

An article I read really has made me think a bit about my habits.

I guess I already knew this but the article really makes it very evident multitasking makes me stupid and slow.
Sure it might feel like a great thing to be able to do two or more things at once, but it always just ends up with two things done bad instead of one thing done well.

So from now on I am going to turn of the background music when doing stuff that takes concentration.
I am going to turn of the computer when working with "analog" stuff.
I am going to try and relearn to focus on one thing and only that thing for longer periods of time.
It has become more and more evident to me that this has become increasingly difficult in the past years.
I am going to turn of the cell phone more (sorry to those people who get annoyed by this, I already get complaints that I am difficult to get in contact with ... it's not going to be easier in the future I guess).

5 comments:

bizdriven said...

I think it depends

there are things you can do together, and be efficient doing together.

there are things that need concentration.

Anonymous said...

Walter Kirn obviously never saw this scene from Iron Eagle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF6R1sJrWPk

Anonymous said...

Well, that article was really scientific, all right!

So the conclusion is a very politically correct and democratic one: If I can't do it, no one can.

Arne said...

Anon I am sorry if I left the impression that this was a scientific article, it uses a few scientific results, but you are right that there is a lot of political "noise" in it.
The conclusion you read from the article isn't the one that I read, but you may be right.

I do think that Walter Kirn has many good points and at least for my life I see many of the same things that he describes.

Arne said...

Andrew thanks for showing me this clip, just stumbled upon your comment again the other day and have been giving it a bit of thought.
Of late I have to recognize that there is some truth to what is shown in this clip.
Rhythm is by no means unimportant when doing a repetitive task (which pretty much everything you do during the day is one way or the other).
Listening to music can actually improve both the quality and speed of many tasks while that I do during the day.