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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)

#211

Post by kqr »

lozaning wrote: post #167
not2b wrote: post #148

For a developer, I think multitasking between two tasks (a higher priority task and a lower priority task that can be worked on while the higher priority task is blocked or waiting or otherwise stuck) is manageable and can work well. Beyond two the task switching cost gets too high in a hurry. It's also not good if management/customers are insisting that both tasks are very high priority, it's too stressful to juggle…

Two things having very high priority means really, neither are. I've reminded many a manager of this in the past.

I got so angry when a high-ranking police official was asked whether they'd start putting higher priority to a specific type of crime after some relate embarrassment on their part, and they answered, "Of course, we continue to prioritise every crime."

...that just means you don't prioritise any crime.

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

#212

Post by kqr »

georgewsinger wrote: post #204

There's something fishy about the "multitasking [and long working hours] is bad" fad of the past 10 years. If I had to guess, it's that these studies aren't sensitive to the outliers. Imagine telling e.g. Elon Musk "multitasking and long hours are bad for your productivity". I've been keeping very detailed data on my personal productivity for years, while taking all of the consensus wisdom ("long hours = bad", "multi…

Maybe humans need a little bit of everything? Short working hours interspersed with a few longer days, focusing on some days, and intense multitasking and coordination on others?

So if you're life currently involves only long days filled with multitasking (probably very common in some walks of life) the solution involves shorter days and more focused time, whereas for others it might be the other way around.

Whatever the truth is, I highly doubt humans are optimised specifically for exactly eight (or six) hours of focused work every day. I suspect we are helped by some variation, including the occasional 14 hour multitasking day.

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

#213

Post by watwut »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #178
shakaijin wrote: post #177

I have been noticing the impact of excessive multitasking on myself lately, and I am now actively trying to avoid it. At first i thought that multitasking would increase my overall efficiency by filling in gaps of downtime in certain tasks, but it soon turned me into a person incapable of focusing on anything deeply. One day, I noticed that I am unable to read a book the same way i did as a child (cover to cover in o…

Have you noticed that your inability to just “read a book” differs by genre? I suffer from that with pretty much any fiction, but can still lose afternoons reading a well-written history or scientific explainer.

Not op, but yes. It is not just difference in genre. The books that appeared to me as awesome when I was younger are completely uninteresting now. I try to read and switch into twitter within three pages.

But, once in a while I run into completely different book and cant stop reading it. Books that I would find boring back then I think. Like you, I read way more well-written history now, but there is also occasional fiction.

I think that the big difference is that once you are well into adulthood, it is much harder to come across book recommendation that suits you. The market is dominated by youth needs I guess.

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

#214

Post by ex3xu »

john61 wrote: post #199
ex3xu wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My intuition would be that the kind of multitasking that can cause damage refers to trying to do multiple tasks that require a certain threshhold of focused attention and executive function, whereas musical training allows for the encoding of muscle memory to a level that doesn't really require executive function. I'd be curious to see if that intuition holds up in practice, though I have my doubts about whether IQ o…

Playing polyphonic music like Bach Fugues requires an enormous amount of focused attention and executive function. Relying on muscle memory alone does not work at all for me and all musicians I know that play polyphonic Bach music.

I think as musical training increases, the amount of energy required for specific kinds of bimanual motor coordination tasks decreases, see Haslinger, 2004 [0]. Regardless, looking at the literature, logitudinal studies seem to indicate that playing polyphonic music seems to improve brain plasticity rather than cause damage. Maybe the damage is more related to the context switching aspect of multitasking.

[0]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hbm.20028

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

#215

Post by touisteur »

imwillofficial wrote: post #164
mvanaltvorst wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if brain structures of children are getting wired differently to better accommodate for multitasking in the modern Information Age. I would imagine that if you multitask all day, your brain would adapt to do this context switching more effortlessly, probably at the cost of something else that the brain judges as less important. Not saying that that's a bad thing, I'm just curious.

It strikes me as a sensory immersion overload. The rise in ADD and other attention related issues seems to be related. Never in history have human animals been exposed to such levels of stimuli at such a young age.

I'm not sure the stimuli of open nature, danger, the elements isn't higher. One element that seems striking is how predictable and repetitive the modern stimuli are. If you can autopilot through a game, it must be quite constrained and your estimation/prediction abilities must be highly trained (or consistently doing 'good enough'). Movies, cartoons are all animated images that reward a good predictor, from image to image, from word to word. Open nature seems more chaotic, less... repetitive and predictable. I'm just saying, different kind of sensory stimulation...

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

#217

Post by rolandog »

watwut wrote: post #213
BeFlatXIII wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you noticed that your inability to just “read a book” differs by genre? I suffer from that with pretty much any fiction, but can still lose afternoons reading a well-written history or scientific explainer.

Not op, but yes. It is not just difference in genre. The books that appeared to me as awesome when I was younger are completely uninteresting now. I try to read and switch into twitter within three pages. But, once in a while I run into completely different book and cant stop reading it. Books that I would find boring back then I think. Like you, I read way more well-written history now, but there is also occasional…

Or, have we become boring? I've noticed I have outgrown some things I loved as a young adult, like most videogames; though I don't know if it's just me being anti-commercial stuff, trying to avoid becoming a pay-to-win customer, and more of a buy-once customer.

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

#218

Post by suzzer99 »

bredren wrote: post #161
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…

Could be generational, and it reminds me of when CNN added the scrolling news ticker to the bottom of all programs. It drove my grandpa nuts, and he literally taped paper over the bottom of his television screen so he could watch Larry King in peace. Now you watch some Minecraft PvP influencer’s YouTube channel and they can’t make a statement without running around playing the game while they do it.

I'm convinced that growing up constantly flipping channels on cable TV gave my generation ADD/ADHD. I went to college in 1987. You could tell the kids who didn't grow with cable. They couldn't multi-task. But they could focus on one thing much better than the cable kids.

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

#219

Post by watwut »

rolandog wrote: post #217
watwut wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not op, but yes. It is not just difference in genre. The books that appeared to me as awesome when I was younger are completely uninteresting now. I try to read and switch into twitter within three pages. But, once in a while I run into completely different book and cant stop reading it. Books that I would find boring back then I think. Like you, I read way more well-written history now, but there is also occasional…

Or, have we become boring? I've noticed I have outgrown some things I loved as a young adult, like most videogames; though I don't know if it's just me being anti-commercial stuff, trying to avoid becoming a pay-to-win customer, and more of a buy-once customer.

> Or, have we become boring?

Why would "not liking the same books as before" imply "we became boring"?

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

#220

Post by sinsterizme »

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #58
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.

It took me over 15 years in the industry to realize a couple of things. If you're young and reading this then I hope you at least spend a few minutes thinking deeply about it. 1) Any productivity gained over that one-or-two-day session makes very little difference in the big picture. Even a week. A company/product/feature is never going to live or die on that 30 hours of coding that you managed to squeeze into 48 hou…

I would like to voice my counter anecdote! I’m still relatively young and have no dependents , and I relish the times I’ve been at the office debugging something until the lights switch off. Then around midnight I finally succeed in my pursuit and return home, in a state of surreal and peaceful contentment as I walk the quiet city streets. I really just love the feeling of being consumed by a problem and letting everything else fall by the wayside. I don’t feel like I owe my company anything, I do it for my own enjoyment. Sadly while working at home I’ve had none of these moments at all, I work very little and find it incredibly boring
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