43F Podcast: The Myth of Multi-tasking

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.