Multitasking is plain stupid
Yesterday I was on Yahoo IM, clicking on my daily 600 Entrecard drops, writing sponsored posts, checking my email and having dinner all at the same time. That’s multitasking for you. Doing multiple tasks at the same time. Although it sounds good, but humans weren’t made to multitask. The term ‘multitask’ came from computer processes where a job or task can be quickly time sliced by the computer to perform each one in a allocated time and switched to the other one so fast that it seems all the tasks are being performed at once. Computers have gotten better in this aspect because of technology has resulted in CPUs that are faster and some computers even have more than one CPU (multiprocessors) in them.
Over the years the term multitasking jumped into job resumes indicating that the person has multiple marketable skills and can perform each one at the same time. Employers even advertised for people who can multitask. For example, it as a useful skill to have the ability to answer the phone in one hand while working on the computer pulling out reference records with the other. But I think we have over glorified the term ‘multitasking’.
We humans are not computers. We can’t get our brains to work faster or split it in two (dual core?) to get more done.
Darren Rowse of Problogger.com wrote a nice article reaffirming what I believe in. We can be more productive if we batch process. That just means we concentrate on one task until it’s finished and then go on to the next.
As can be seen from my blog, I’ve not been posting often here. All thanks to ‘multitasking’ when I felt so kiasu I have to answer every email, IM message and have work all open at the same time. In the end, I get less done. I even justify that I can’t blog here so often because I was so “busy”.
Anyway, I’m making changes now and I’ve started to do concentrate on one thing at a time. I leave my IM on only on specific times of the day. I do my writing assignments in one fixed allocated block of time. I also try not to eat my meals with the notebook in front of me. Just went out to CentrePoint and saw many office people after work having dinner while having their notebooks turned on.
It was also funny while writing this post I saw LiewCF’s blog picture of a person working with 4 notebooks in front of him. Can a person be more productive facing 4 computers ?
Popularity: 57% [?]
July 19th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Not to be stereotypical, but it’s usually that men can’t multitask and the women that naturally can.
I multitask all the time with great efficiency because I grew up from young doing it. In fact, I have to do 2 things at once unless it’s something that I am unfamiliar with then I can concentrate fully on it, otherwise I can’t concentrate on the job at hand if its doing one simple thing at a time.
Saves me a lot of time too. One time I was tweaking my mp3 player, learning how to compile on linux, chatting to 3 people and blogging all at once. Things normally go like that for it. It works out perfectly in the end especially if you time everything right.
July 20th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I’m multitasking person type. But ionly 2-3 jobs at same time. I will feel bored and long to do some thing if only 1 jobs.
Umh.. base on Edrei’s opinion maybe its because I’m female
I often do Blogging while open the review site. After get article for blogging while surf on review site (And chatting with my friends at YM), I post all of them at once time wehehehe
Some times I also post forum and do entrecard drop lol
Btw nice to meet U
July 26th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Edrei: Interesting! I have heard studies about how women brains are structured differently to allow them to be better at multitasking compared to men. Yeah, if you are doing 2-3 things and those tasks are simple I guess it’s not a problem. It’s probably a skill others are better at..
Shireishou : Again, simple multitasking is ok to me. Taking it to the extreme becomes a time waster.