Computers are not really able to multitask either, except for true parrallel processing machines. They usually just assign small amounts of time to different task, just like you mention people that claim to be multitaskers do.

However the one things computers do that we could learn from is interrupt driven switching of tasks. ALthough I’m pretty sure I saw interrupt driven work mentioned here at some stage.

As an example, I often find myself waiting for things to finish compiling, or simulations to run, or even web pages to load when the net is overloaded at my University. So I may not really doing multiple things personally, but I’m waiting for tasks to complete on my computer and dealing with them as they come around. The computer is doing multitasking for me :)

Semantics semantics.

Washing dishes while dinner cooks is “performing” multiple “tasks” “during the same period of time”.

[…] The myth of multitasking. (mp3) […]

Meh. I think that’s more than semantics if you catch what I was trying to say.

Maybe I have “Alan Watts on the Brain,” but you’re not actually transitively cooking if you’re doing the dishes. Lots of things we’ve caused to happen in the world are going on at one time; that doesn’t mean we’re “doing them” all the time they’re happening someplace.

I don’t doubt for a second that people can get more done with more efficiency by starting one plate spinning then running to the next (I do stuff like that too). I just need to get a message to overwrought people that the inability to really do five things at once is not a form of retardation—it’s simply being human. And away melts the irrational guilt that you aren’t actually “Hal.”

Fair enough.

There’s a lovely example of the evils of multitasking in Goldratt’s Critical Chain.

Suppose you have three things to deliver: A, B and C. Suppose they all take, I don’t know, 2 days each to complete. If you did them one after the other, A will be finished by day 3, B by day 5, and C by day 7. AABBCC.

Now suppose you want to satisfy the people who commissioned B and C that you’re paying attention to them, and you decide to multitask. So you decide to split things up, and work on them in one day blocks, ABCABC.

The result is that now A is delivered on day 5, two days later than before, and B is delivered on day 6, one day late, and C is delivered on day 7, no earlier than it was before. You’ve potentially pissed off two people for no benefit.

If you work through the example with shorter and shorter timeslices you can see that the more finegrained your multitasking, the later all the tasks become.

Of course it’s worse in the real world because of the overhead of context switching, something computer scientists know all about.

So true. Many women claim to be multi-taskers, don’t believe them. It’s only wishful thinking, a huge big myth. I liked the explanation of the Goldratt’s Critical Chain. I’ll send it to my team so they understand that, if they keep asking me for a new thing every 5 min., they’ll only get it done my Christmas.

Hy from Barcelona, Merlin! I would like to congratulate you for your site and ask if it’s possible to get the transcription of your podcasts. For those of us who don’t have a very good level in english is better to read than hear you. Thanks a lot!

Agreed.

[takes sip of coffee, looks over at window, notes intricate pattern on back of hand resembles map of Venice canals]

Yup. Definitely true.

I’m with flaneuse on the transcripts, listening to a podcast is way more time consuming and productivity-sapping than reading the equivalent post.

I once met a researcher who got subjects to do tricky mental calculations with very sensitive motion detectors strapped to their heads. It turns out that even staying balanced standing up requires miniscule bits of our attention and thus we start to sway if concentrating too hard on something else. He asked me to add a few numbers up while standing on one leg; it’s surprisingly hard. This is also the reason that people close their eyes or look to one side when trying to remember something.