CBS' Sunday Morning had an editorial segment on the pitfalls of multi-tasking; scientific information that it has altered the human brain, requiring (my interpretation) more and greater distraction and stimulation of busy nothingness. For one who, in my best moments, may be said to task this is not breaking news.
Driving and talking on the phone seems like folly on four wheels. I used to work with my color pencils as I talked on the house phone; I no longer do that, for both activities got too little of me. I am unable to turn away from a heating pan to find something in the drawer without the pan's contents boiling over. I can watch clouds - or just the sky, bare of ornament - for lengths of time that make me blush. I have evolved into the champion of my childhood picture book, Ferdinand the Bull. My wish is to smell the flowers, in a literal or figurative sense, and keep the agenda as simple as possible.
The first odious thing about multi-tasking is the phrase. Is it so difficult to say, "I'm having to do several things at once"? It feels like a robot language; we've programmed the glombot to multi-task...could it be one of the aps? Yes, I have a cell phone. Our house may have been the last in California to relinquish its analog models...we couldn't even get a signal in our carport. We talk, we text, and I (can't speak for anyone else) type out my complete words on the phone keypad, paying attention and sometimes hitting the wrong key, sending a message before its time and receiving "???????????????" in response.
Doing something which requires time also deserves attention, whether it is my first choice of activity or not. When our task is one which fulfills us, why would we want to diminish the pleasure by doing something less appealing at the same moment? My suspicion that we are on the brink of irreversible overload makes me protective of what cells or neuropathways or functions remain. What stresses the mind also stresses the body, which should be reason enough to reconsider.
We have been fed a lot of baloney in our lives. Multi-tasking is not a virtue; it is a way of cheapening, dulling and diluting our experiences. Please, sit down and watch the movie, do the crossword, listen to the friend who has called, or call back when you can be present. Stop what you're doing when someone comes home at the end of the day and wants your attention.
When resources are diminished, it may be all that we are able to give is our time. That may be what is needed most. One thing at a time, whether for ourselves or another. One thing at a time.
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7 comments:
Marylinn,
This is so very well said and so wonderfully apt that I must repeat it:
"Doing something which requires time also deserves attention, whether it is my first choice of activity or not. When our task is one which fulfills us, why would we want to diminish the pleasure by doing something less appealing at the same moment? My suspicion that we are on the brink of irreversible overload makes me protective of what cells or neuropathways or functions remain. What stresses the mind also stresses the body, which should be reason enough to reconsider.
"We have been fed a lot of baloney in our lives. Multi-tasking is not a virtue; it is a way of cheapening, dulling and diluting our experiences. Please, sit down and watch the movie, do the crossword, listen to the friend who has called, or call back when you can be present. Stop what you're doing when someone comes home at the end of the day and wants your attention."
That ought to be inscribed on a chip implanted in a billion brains.
(But let the chip be an idea, not a piece of silicon, and let the inscription be writ in biodegradable fairy dust.)
Here we've somehow managed to avoid ever texting or having a cell phone or a credit card or a car or... and you may ask, then how have we survived?
Very good question, that would be. I ask it every day, since every day it's in doubt.
One lives as one can and must, I suppose.
Bottom line, what I take from this post: do the things that you enjoy doing, do them one at a time, pay attention while you do them, do them right. Sounds so simple. You might start a revolution.
The following quote is from an article on multi-tasking as it applies to university students and learning but is still relevant, I think, to a discussion on mult-tasking.
"...Nass and two colleagues published a study that found that self-described multitaskers performed much worse on cognitive and memory tasks that involved distraction than did people who said they preferred to focus on single tasks. Nass says he was surprised at the result: He had expected the multitaskers to perform better on at least some elements of the test. But no. The study was yet another piece of evidence for the unwisdom of multitasking."
http://chronicle.com/article/Scholars-Turn-Their-Attention/63746/
Personally, I can't enjoy or do anything well if I multi-task, but find myself doing several things at once if I'm procrastinating with something I don't want to do.
Excellent post Marylinn! You've expressed it so well.
P.S. I still have a battered and much read copy of Ferdinand the Bull. :)
Marylinn, this is true for me. I am no multi-tasker and don't see it as a talent. Rather things that take talent take concentration and frequently complete submersion. Though I too like to look at the sky and consider myself an expert zero-tasker.
I am slowly falling into single-tasking simply by default... it's de fault of my aging brain. I can't tell you how many times I walk into another room to get something only to stand there and ponder what the heck it was that I was going to get.
I purchased a little hand-held dictaphone to make notes on things so I don't forget them. The problem is that I put it down someplace and I can't recall where.
Tom - A revolution...if only. I am humbled by your praise for which I thank you. The joy I find here with each comment - following the joy and relief of actually completing a posting - makes me giddy. One does live as one can and must and to do so with the awareness of being complete is a revolution in itself.
Penny - Still have your copy of "Ferdinand"...what a treasure it must be. The unwisdom of yet one more bottle of snake oil being pressed upon us. I call the several-things-at-a-time to avoid something else dithering. I believe it gives off its own unique energy which can be read by satellites. Thank you.
Rebecca - Zero tasking, there is a worthy goal. I have my moments but rarely allow myself to enjoy them without pangs. The Puritan ethic, fight it as we may, still runs too strong through my people.
Robert - My arrival at this pokey pace was likely by default as well. Thank you for a laugh. I begin far too many sentences with, "Remind me..." yet know that it is more than age that makes me balk at the notion of speeding up, piling on.
Marilyn,
Visiting here is a zero task because it's a pleasure.
I live amid wreckage which appears in the aspect of one huge task the size of Nevada but for physical reasons lack the ability to task my way at present even as far as tying my shoes (I've discovered I need a right thumb for that, and mine isn't working).
But I think if we let the Puritan Ethic down, it will manage to get along without us somehow. And there's always one finger typing. It's kind of... uh, contemplative?
Tom - I am sorry to know of wreckage, especially of such proportion, and difficulties with tasks. Some of that goes on here. May the Puritan ethic be the smallest of our concerns. For years I have felt that many of us live our lives by adapting; it might be all of us, I don't know. As you said the other day, we do what we can and we must. I hope that does not ask too much of you. And yes, there is contemplative simplicity in one-fingered typing.
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