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Work, Switch, Multitask

You have three minutes to read this before the next distraction

Taran March @ Quality Digest
Mon, 08/23/2010 - 15:21
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Body

One of the more intense information wildfires to sweep through media channels recently is the news that multitasking does more harm than good. Or does it? This fire seems to burn both ways.

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In his new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Minds (W. W. Norton & Co., 2010), technology writer Nicholas Carr laments the erosion of sustained concentration due to the high-speed flood of instantaneous information. “Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words,” he writes. “Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

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Comments

Submitted by D Wylie McVay Jr on Tue, 08/24/2010 - 10:56

Excellent Quality Topic

Bravo for having the courage to write about multi-tasking. It's time that quality professionals took this idea to task and expose the seldom acknowledged negative side effects on business performance and continuity.

Research studies, such as the ones cited in the article, seem out of context with too narrow of a scope. The scientific method tells us the so-called "scientific conclusions" from such study are dubious facts at best. The question I have is this: what problem was the researcher attempting to solve (other than perhaps tenure)? Mistaking subject response speed for sound problem solving seems to be a good example of non-critical thinking and faulty logic.

For readers interested in understanding the pandemic effects of multi-tasking, may wish to check an essay on Critical Thinking by Greg R. Haskins as well as learning more about the Gestalt Theory.

I realize Gestalt is "old theory" which many may claim is not relevant to today (considering our scientific advances of the past 100 years). However, the conclusions from the 1920's research (paraphrased) appear applicable today: the human brain is limited in the ability to understand chaos of continuous random changes and will be overwhelmed and lead to poor critical assessments.

Doesn't the previous paragraph describe our current environment rather accurately?

D. Wylie McVay, Jr.

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