Multi-tasking -- Or maybe not.
As a long-term digital immigrant I was amazed at how Bob, my father-in-law could work in his shop without a radio playing. Not only that, he would only take one tool out of the tool box at a time, use it, clean it, and put it back in the box. His work habits seemed to me to take much longer to get results. One day I asked him, “Why don’t you have music in the shop”?
He responded with a little poem,
“Everything I do,
I do with all my might.
Things done by halves,
Are seldom done right.”
That memory came back to me as I began my research for this blog on multi-tasking, so I did a Google search and came up with one strong hit from a high-school annual in 1935. (http://wayne.migenweb.net/casstech.htm) Surely we have progressed a long way from then, or have we? Were we better off doing with all our might?
I grew up doing homework in front of the TV. When computers became the norm n every office I learned to switch back and forth from window to window. The pain of conference calls could be soothed with the mute button on the phone and Spider Solitaire. Now, as a grad student the idea of writing without iTunes and iChat is inconceivable. I make sure too check Google news every couple of minutes just to make sure I don’t miss anything in the world. The thought of my den without a bowl of hard candy makes we want to start smoking again.
I belong to a society addicted to multiple inputs. Hollowell (2005) describes the problem as Attention Deficit Trait.
“When a manager is desperately trying to deal with more input than he possibly can, the brain and body get locked into a reverberating circuit while the brain's frontal lobes lose their sophistication, as if vinegar were added to wine. The result is black-and-white thinking; perspective and shades of gray disappear. People with ADT have difficulty staying organized, setting priorities, and managing time, and they feel a constant low level of panic and guilt.”
Unfortunately that sounds not only like me, but also like many of my students. In writing this blog I am experimenting with only one monitor, no Internet, no iTunes and iChat turned off. I wonder how long it will be before I stop twitching and reaching for candy?
Reference
Hallowell, Edward M. "Overloaded Circuits Why Smart People Underperform." Harvard Business Review (2005): 54-62
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Lol, i'm with you, brother. I grew up in a family of five kids, and I cannot work without something going on in the background. But I know well enough at what level I have to set the "distraction" meter if I intend to get real work done. On the high productivity scale, I can play classical, or movie music with little to no vocals. Because I'm always surrounded by multiple monitors I can play the visualization/screensaver on the music monitor with no ill effect. The extreme opposite of getting anything done is to play a video-podcast, movie or just good ol' TV. I can pretty much guarantee that I will spend 90% of my time staring at the video and only look at the work needed to be done during commercials or any break in the action. So something that might take me an hour to get done can take well beyond 10-hours if I'm stupid enough to turn the TV on. One high production thing I've discovered (via past emdt grads), is to work on grading while walking on my treadmill. Again, depending on my desired level of productivity is where I'll decide what music/podcast to play in the background. It's amazing how fast the minutes go by when I'm grading and writing comments to student work. :-)
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