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Multitasking hurts performance and may even damage the brain (2018)

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Re: Multitasking hurts performance and may even damage the brain (2018)

#41

Post by athenot »

Taek wrote: post #22
nicoburns wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you say is true over the long term, but not so much over the short term. Need me to skip breaks and work hours for one day when I'm well rested. I definitely can be significantly more productive than usual. Problem is that it's not sustainable.

Most coders I know have had occasional run ins with a rabbit hole where several days of their life got sucked into a single drawn out coding session with little breaks besides food, and had some of the most productive few days of their lives doing that. If you need me to do a three day sprint, I'm going to accomplish the most without any breaks and with very sporadic sleep. (typically when doing a multi day session m…

I would much rather code for 3 days non stop and then take a 4 day break doing some outdoors activity. I think the "business hours" schedule is fantastic for meetings to discuss but terrible for creative work.

The catch is than in many positions, one needs to blend these 2 modes of operation. Some collaboration, some deep work. Unless there's support throughout the organization, what ends up suffering is the deep work.

Re: Multitasking hurts performance and may even damage the brain (2018)

#42

Post by [deleted] »

etxm wrote: post #20
gautamdivgi wrote: post #4

I'd vote to have no notifications (of any kind) from chat & messaging tools as the default. This too especially at work to reduce overload of multi-tasking. Even showing the number of messages on an icon in the taskbar is very distracting.

I got on this train when I got my first iPhone. I turned off every notification except the ringer (no one calls me except free cruise spam, so maybe I should silence that). At work, I disable all Slack messages and check Slack in my slack time. Email gets checked at 9AM and 4:30P. It’s glorious.

[deleted]

Re: Multitasking hurts performance and may even damage the brain (2018)

#43

Post by LZ_Khan »

Genuine question then.. how are we supposed to function properly as software engineers, especially in jobs with long feedback loops?

The nature of my job is that I'm almost more of a train conductor than a software engineer. I configure a job, run it, then wait for 10-30 minutes to get the results. I do this for maybe 5 jobs at a time, on 5 different projects. Naturally I feel a lot of stress and cognitive burden while doing this but I figured it's part of the job.

Is this normal for backend, distributed-computing heavy jobs? Is there a better strategy I can adopt? Should I try to get a new role with a shorter compile-test feedback loop?

Re: Multitasking hurts performance and may even damage the brain (2018)

#44

Post by josefresco »

My wife (like many wives) multi-tasks to the extreme. Coordinating our household, and running a business means she always has about 100 things in her brain at once. Always on her phone, always planning, making lists, researching, ordering. It's certainly common, and a wonder to witness however I worry about the effects on her brain, as she has trouble sometimes vocalizing her thoughts. She often forgets someone's name, or something's name and it takes her a minute to slow down and find the words. It's happening more and more, and concerns her. I wonder if it's a byproduct of just age or years of multi-tasking and "mind juggling" so many things.

Re: Multitasking hurts performance and may even damage the brain (2018)

#45

Post by tshaddox »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #34
andrewstuart wrote: post #11

My primary school age son, and anecdotally, lots of other kids of similar age, relentlessly multitask in ways that hurts my brain just to think about. He literally is playing a game, watching a YouTube video in another screen, and talking to friends at the same time, and in the most extreme case, is even listening to an audiobook or podcast as well. Asking kids about it, they all say that's just what they do and look…

That's a pretty wide amount of tasks, and more than that it's a lot of sensory input. It makes me wonder if they are actually processing any of it or just letting it sort of wash over them. Like at the end of it could they give you a detailed report about what happened with any one of those things? Even just asking for the gist of things, I imagine at least one of those things is being tuned out entirely. For instanc…

This sounds more like entertainment or leisure time, so I don't know how important "processing any of it" really is. Giving a detailed report about what happened certainly doesn't seem to be a goal, and I don't see why it ought to be. If you're trying to relax or be entertained, and you are succeeding, that seems fine to me.

Re: Multitasking hurts performance and may even damage the brain (2018)

#46

Post by [deleted] »

LZ_Khan wrote: post #43

Genuine question then.. how are we supposed to function properly as software engineers, especially in jobs with long feedback loops? The nature of my job is that I'm almost more of a train conductor than a software engineer. I configure a job, run it, then wait for 10-30 minutes to get the results. I do this for maybe 5 jobs at a time, on 5 different projects. Naturally I feel a lot of stress and cognitive burden whi…

[deleted]

Re: Multitasking hurts performance and may even damage the brain (2018)

#47

Post by foobarian »

andrewstuart wrote: post #11

My primary school age son, and anecdotally, lots of other kids of similar age, relentlessly multitask in ways that hurts my brain just to think about. He literally is playing a game, watching a YouTube video in another screen, and talking to friends at the same time, and in the most extreme case, is even listening to an audiobook or podcast as well. Asking kids about it, they all say that's just what they do and look…

Similar situation, second grade son. I like to think that when not going outside a bunch, where the sensory bandwidth is immense, they have an easy time replacing it with streams of digital input like that. Sure they are able to do all these things simultaneously that seem impressive, but we would be able to instantly gauge how far a dozen points of interest are, notice tracks on the ground, unusual plants, hidden animals, hear animal calls, etc.

Re: Multitasking hurts performance and may even damage the brain (2018)

#49

Post by leoh »

mapcars wrote: post #48

This is not true, there are yogis who can do dozens and even hundreds things at the same time. These researchers study people who never did any work on their mind and make statements about whole humanity.

I have never heard of this, source?

Re: Multitasking hurts performance and may even damage the brain (2018)

#50

Post by slver »

Previous studies:

- "Women 'better at multitasking' than men, study finds"

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24645100

This study:

- "Multitasking Lowers IQ"

- "Successful People Don't Multitask"

- "While more research is needed to determine if multitasking is physically damaging the brain (versus existing brain damage that predisposes people to multitask), it's clear that multitasking has negative effects."

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

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