Overstretched and about to snap:

Multi-tasking, a myth

By Lionel WIJESIRI

In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: "There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time." To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one's time; it was a mark of intelligence.

"This steady and unrestrained attention to one object is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustles, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind."

In modern times, hurry, bustle, and agitation have become a regular way of life for many people - so much so that we have embraced a word to describe our efforts to respond to the many pressing demands on our time: multitasking.

Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as possible.

Distraction

I believe we live in a culture of distraction. According to a pilot survey done, prior to the availability of smartphones, we accessed the internet an average of 4-5 times a day.

Now the average is 22-27 times a day. We really should be worried about this. The effect of all of this connectivity is that we're increasingly distracted.

The funny part about distraction is that it's a worsening condition. The more distracted we are, the more distractible we become.Some people call switching our attention from one thing to another 'multi-tasking' like we're a computer with dual cores running two simultaneous processes.

Except we're not! Numerous brain studies have shown that what we call 'multi-tasking' in humans is not multi-tasking at all. Your brain is merely switching its attention back and forth between many tasks.

When you practice distraction, which is what multi-tasking really is, you're training your brain to pay attention to distracting things.

The more you train your brain to pay attention to distractions, the more you get distracted and the less able you are to focus even for brief periods of time on the two or three things you were trying to get done in your 'multi-tasking' in the first place.

Attention

I completely agree with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the University of Chicago professor who said, "Humans cannot really successfully multitask, but can rather move attention rapidly from one task to the other in quick succession, which only makes us feel as if we were actually doing things simultaneously."

It was in the late 1990s and early 2000s, we sensed a kind of exuberance about the possibilities of multitasking. Advertisements for new electronic gadgets - particularly the first generation of handheld digital devices - celebrated the notion of using technology to accomplish several things at once. \

The word multi-tasking began appearing in the "skills" sections of résumés, as office workers restyled themselves as high-tech, high-performing team players.

But more recently, challenges to the ethos of multitasking have begun to emerge.

Numerous studies have shown the sometimes-fatal danger of using cell phones and other electronic devices while driving.

In the business world, where concerns about time-management are perennial, warnings about workplace distractions spawned by a multitasking culture are on the rise.

In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, "Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers."

The psychologist who led the study called this new "infomania" a serious threat to workplace productivity.

Recently, a friend gave me a book written by Dr. Edward Hallowell, renowned US psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.

The book had the self-explanatory title CrazyBusy. Dr. Hallowell has been offering therapies to combat extreme multitasking for years.

Changing our brains

In his book he calls multi-tasking a "mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously."

He describes a new condition, "Attention Deficit Trait," which he claims is rampant in the business world. ADT is "purely a response to the hyperkinetic environment in which we live. Never in history has the human brain been asked to track so many data points and this challenge can be controlled only by creatively engineering one's environment and one's emotional and physical health."

A neurologist explained to me how the brain reacts when a person is multi-tasking. To better understand the multitasking phenomenon, neurologists have studied the workings of the brain by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans.

They have found that when people engage in "task-switching" - that is, multitasking behaviour - the flow of blood increases to a region of the frontal cortex called Brodmann area 10. (The flow of blood to particular regions of the brain is taken as a proxy indication of activity in those regions.) "This is presumably the last part of the brain to evolve, the most mysterious and exciting part," the neurologist said - adding, with a touch of exaggeration, "It's what makes us most human."

He added, "It is also what makes multi-tasking a poor long-term strategy for learning. We have found evidence of a "response selection bottleneck" that occurs when the brain is forced to respond to several stimuli at once.

As a result, task-switching leads to time lost as the brain determines which task to perform.

Our research has also found that multitasking contributes to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline, which can cause long-term health problems if not controlled, and contributes to the loss of short-term memory".

So, in essence, when we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention.

People who have achieved great things often credit for their success a finely honed skill for paying attention.

Genius

When asked about his particular genius, Isaac Newton responded that if he had made any discoveries, it was due to "patient attention than to any other talent." Any reader who is interested in learning basic psychology, I advise The Principles of Psychology by William James, the great psychologist.

The web edition could be downloaded free.

In the preface he says, "The man must indeed be sanguine who, in this crowded age, can hope to have many readers for fourteen hundred continuous pages from his pen."

But, it is an interesting book. William James outlines the differences among "sensorial attention," "intellectual attention," "passive attention," and the like, and noted the "gray chaotic indiscriminateness" of the minds of people who were incapable of paying attention.

James compared our stream of thought to a river : "On the whole easy simple flowing predominates in it, the drift of things is with the pull of gravity, and effortless attention is the rule, but at intervals an obstruction, a set-back, a log-jam occurs, stops the current, creates an eddy, and makes things temporarily move the other way."

Default condition

To James, steady attention was thus the default condition of a mature mind, an ordinary state undone only by disruption.

Like Chesterfield, James believed that the transition from youthful distraction to mature attention was in large part the result of personal mastery and discipline - and so was illustrative of character.

"The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again," he wrote, "is the very root of judgment, character, and will."

It is quite clear that our collective will to pay attention is fairly weak.

We require advice books to teach us how to avoid distraction.

In the not-too-distant future we may even employ new devices to help us overcome the unintended attention deficits created by today's gadgets.

Perhaps we will all accept as a matter of course a computer governor - like the devices placed on engines so that people can't drive cars beyond a certain speed.

Our technological governors might prompt us with reminders to set mental limits when we try to do too much, too quickly, all at once.