Multitasking hurts performance and may even damage the brain (2018) • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 04, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

belval wrote: post #82

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you for taking the time to write this, I got a job at FANG right out of college and the impostor syndrome is real so I have compensated with a lot of extra work. Unfortunately the truth is at this scale my contribution makes little difference and the extra hours even less so. I just end up burning myself out over nothing.

[deleted]

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

#122

Post by 0xFACEFEED » Tue, May 04, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

wombatmobile wrote: post #97

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's interesting to read so many comments against marathon sessions. I can't imagine reading the same set of comments 20 years ago (when I was young and a frequent marathoner, as were my teammates). Is this indicative of a cultural shift in the industry? Or collective learning? Or might it just be that no 20 somethings are commenting here and it's just a sample bias resulting from older commentators? Do 20 something…

> Is this indicative of a cultural shift in the industry?

Yes I think the industry is changing.

In my anecdotal experience, the quality of programmers has taken a nose dive. I think part of the reason is that it's been a lucrative industry for long enough that parents have had time to coach their children into the industry.

In the early-mid 2000s (when I cut my teeth) and especially in the 80s/90s (from what I hear) you came across more "hacker" types that were doing this work for the love of doing it. Yea you still had the "Initech" type companies that would outsource/etc but cutting edge programming work was a lot easier to find.

These days I'm seeing more and more people that treat programming as a "job", not a "passion".

Obviously I think this is a good thing for people, in general.

But I also think that, while the potential for software is at its highest, the actual relative quality of software is at its absolute lowest. This is due in large part to the bad quality of software engineering these days. Again, very anecdotal.

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

#123

Post by nefitty » Tue, May 04, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

wombatmobile wrote: post #97

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's interesting to read so many comments against marathon sessions. I can't imagine reading the same set of comments 20 years ago (when I was young and a frequent marathoner, as were my teammates). Is this indicative of a cultural shift in the industry? Or collective learning? Or might it just be that no 20 somethings are commenting here and it's just a sample bias resulting from older commentators? Do 20 something…

This “Type-A” hustle mentality resonates with me. I do see lots of people pushing back on it, ie ridiculing JD’s that mention passion, emphasizing work-life balance, disdain for “brogrammer” culture, etc. This seems especially prevalent on Twitter.

My personal life doesn’t allow me to do marathons. If I was single I would probably be hauling ass all day every day. I understand the health implications, but the desire to be “the best” or to be “10x” clouds my long-term vision.

I want to dominate like rms, Carmack, Beej, Eich, etc. That might put some people off, but technically, those same critics are my competition. If you don’t want to put in the same hours as me, that’s cool, but there aren’t an infinite amount of $200k+ roles in the world.

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

#124

Post by 0xFACEFEED » Tue, May 04, 2021, 10:35 PM UTC

godot wrote: post #98

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 will preface this by saying I agree with you. However, I'd like to point out (as someone else did too about downplaying the upside) -- if you did get rewarded with money, respect, promotions (decision making power), knowledge -- these are all real material gains from those long hours. True, from the business point of view, your extra hours didn't matter to the business in the long run. It did matter for your career…

> In fact, if you happened to work for a growing unicorn, and you gained those rewards and promotions with those long hours, you may even have made lifechanging money from unicorn equity, from those long hours.

That's what happened to me. Unicorn -> long hours -> pay day.

> Which, comes back to the point, this is unhealthy and somewhat toxic

This is the unfortunate conclusion that I've come to as well.

High risk, high reward. There are people who work just as hard and for just as long, but don't get to enjoy the spoils. When I think of how close I came to not making it -- eek.

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

#125

Post by booleandilemma » Tue, May 04, 2021, 10:36 PM UTC

slver wrote: post #50

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.

You can do both but not at the same time.

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

#126

Post by throwawaygimp » Tue, May 04, 2021, 10:36 PM UTC

Warning - I read some early research about this topic, something I was interested in at the time, around 15 years ago. Since then I've been actively trying to avoid multitasking as much as possible over the last decade or so.

It did, I believe, have one unforeseen side-effect: I now struggle to multitask in relatively simple situations where it's necessary. Maybe it's just because I'm getting older (42), but I seem to struggle with it much more than any of my peers.

Still, I wouldn't change anything. I believe I'm as or more productive per unit of time than anyone I've worked with.

Edit - one more side effect: I used to regularly work 12+ hour days. Now I'm _completely_ spent after 7-8 hours, as those hours are so intense.

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

#127

Post by 0xFACEFEED » Tue, May 04, 2021, 10:36 PM UTC

cgrealy wrote: post #72

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This. So much this. At my company, we give out "values awards". People are frequently lauded for working late evenings and weekends. Everytime this happens, I cringe. If people feel they need to do this, it's a sign that projects were under-resourced or the deadlines were too tight. At this point in my career, I am so much more comfortable saying "no" to upper management. "My team does not have capacity for this" "ok…

> At this point in my career, I am so much more comfortable saying "no" to upper management.

Me too. But I also don't care about career progression or money anymore. 10 years ago that wasn't the case.

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

#128

Post by phobosanomaly » Tue, May 04, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #88

refactor_master wrote: post #5

Again and again, people just refuse to accept that cognitive performance has very clear limits, and that multitasking, skipped breaks and long hours are, at best, a total waste of time. And exponentially so, the more “focus-intensive” the work is. Why do we have this bias? Is it deeply wired in some sort of survival instinct?

Ever since I learned that a lot of the standards for medical schedules, long work hours etc were set by a cocaine addict who believed it was natural to pull long hours ( https://historydaily.org/cocaine-and-modern-medicine-a-twist... ) it's really stuck with me. So many bad practices basically persist due to inertia and we all suffer for it.

Medical errors kill around a quarter-million people a year. Third-leading cause of death.

Anderson JG, Abrahamson K. Your Health Care May Kill You: Medical Errors. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2017;234:13-17. PMID: 28186008.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28186008/

Medical residents are capped at 80 hours per-week making around $50k/year, and this is sold as some sort of breakthrough over the previous system where they were working well-in-excess of those 80/week for years during their residency.

What is normalized in the healthcare system is beyond insane.

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

#129

Post by acituan » Tue, May 04, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

Yet multitasking is still being branded as something of a higher cognitive functioning. Byung-Chul Han in The Burnout Society claims that it is the opposite:

> “The attitude toward time and environment known as “multitasking’ does not represent civilisational progress. Human beings in the late-modern society of work and information are not the only ones capable of multitasking. Rather, such an aptitude amounts to regression. Multitasking is commonplace among wild animals. It is an attentive technique indispensable for survival in the wilderness.

> An animal busy with eating must also attend to other tasks. For example, it must hold rivals away from its prey. It must constantly be on the lookout, lest it be eaten while eating. At the same time, it must guard its young and keep an eye on its sexual partner. In the wild, the animal is forced to divide its attention between various activities. That is why animals are incapable of contemplative immersion—either they are eating or they are copulating.”

> ...

> We owe the cultural achievements of humanity—which include philosophy—to deep, contemplative attention.”

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

#130

Post by JimBlackwood » Tue, May 04, 2021, 10:44 PM UTC

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…

As a young person who works parttime as data-analist next to my studies;

I feel what you’re describing is part of growing older and being in a different phase of life. What you mentioned is something that I have read more often. I feel that the only way for me to appreciate work like you do, is to currently work more than might be healthy. As wrong as that might seem, it seems very right to me.

For instance, with my 16-hours/week I dont get done what I want. I’m sure it doesn’t matter in the long term, but there’s so many cool projects to do. I would love to be allowed to work in the evening to finish some cool stuff. I genuinely feel better after that. I expect to feel different about this after 15 years in the industry.

Maybe that’s just how we learn, maybe it’s societal expectations that we try to live up to and stop caring about when we’re older.