23 Dec09

Topics:Arb Thoughts 

My mother told me a few years back that from the moment I was conceived, I never stopped wriggling or moving. I still find it difficult to sit still. I must be entertained or my body will find a way to occupy itself on a subconscious level. I believe this is an trait I inherited. I've had grandparents, great uncles and aunts who all sit around drumming their fingers without realising it. At another point an ex girlfriend of mine claimed I had ADHD.

In my youth, I played with random toys while I was watching TV. In my teenage years, I was surfing the web, chatting, playing music or watching the TV and chatting online all at the same time. Towards the end of my teenage years, I was working for an internet call centre where I would be helping a customer on the phone connect via his PABX in the hotel he was staying at, assist a colleague with a random email application that their client had and be holding 5 personal chats on IRC ..... AND still maintain a presence in a chat room. 

My weekends I use to bounce from party to party at on one night and maintain hundreds of friendships.

According to articles, my environment may have resulted in me having a mild case of ADHD. Maybe this is the case, maybe it isn't. Let us wait for conclusive evidence of me having ADHD first. :P

Nearly a decade on and I'm facing my thirtieth birthday in just a short few months. While I still struggle to focus on just ONE thing at a time I am making a concerted effort. The reason, when I do multitask, I feel I am getting less done than when I take time and just focus on one item at a time. Its like my brain was burnt out from doing so much of it when I was a decade younger. After having just typed that, another thought occurred [care of Nicole... second tea break], that maybe it isn't the fact that age [since I'm still young at heart] is degrading my ability to keep up with so many. Maybe it is the fact that the tasks that are being performed are so much more complicated. There are some scientists out there who may disagree with this theory though. :/

On a social level,my monkeysphere has gotten a lot smaller these days. I'm glad for it in some ways because it allows me to interact more often with those people that mean more to me more often. This isn't to say that I don't go out and expand my social circles through random activities which keep me entertained during the evening. I'm not going to lie. It takes work sometimes to maintain relationship. I find that those people I don't put in effort with sometimes just fade out of my life. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes because life gets busy.

Obviously, there are some dangers to multitasking. Think bout texting while driving. Think about checking and responding to your twitter feed while you should be listening/calling/emailing/paying attention to your significant other.

If we flip that thought on its head, there can be some advantages. Multitasking I believe our ability to multitask (efficient or not) is necessary to be able to adapt to our environment. Apparently 3 animals that are really good at multitasking are humans, horses and dogs. Personally. I think cats are better at it than dogs, I wonder why that stupid web site didn't mention it. If we think about what we had to face when we lived in the great out doors, we needed to be able to cook our food, eat it and beware of other animals trying to steal it. Hell, if we think about hunting for food, that takes a lot. You have to be aware of whether you are visible, if you are down wind, if the wind is changing, the light is changing whether the animal being hunted is aware..... this all equates to one end result, but it is factoring in multiple variables and responding to those variables in order to be successful.

These days we have cows and slaughter houses. Life is a lot simpler on the hunting front. Leaving us to use our brains for other things. Welcome to the digital age. I watched a video which was sent to me yesterday by my good friend Glynis. It mentions how much more information we have to process in this day and age. One interesting thing I noted in the video was the number of words in the English language. Currently it is around 540 000 words. That is HALF A MILLION WORDS! In William Shakespears time this was around 110 000 word mark. A mere 400 years ago. I'm willing to put money on the table that the majority of the additional words were adding in the last century.

Whether multitasking is good or bad or even a bit of both, one thing is for sure. We are living in exponential times. More information gets to be processed. More effectively. More efficiently. The kids growing up have a tough time ahead being trained for jobs that haven't been thought of. They need to be able to adapt far quicker than the hunter with all the information being presented. Hell, forget the kids, we the adults of this world need to be able to adapt to this fast pace environement. Multitasking is an essential part of daily living in the information economy.

If you do a bit more reading, you'll find "the depth of our attention governs the depth of our thought and our memory, when we multitask we sacrifice understanding and learning." I quote this from here.

So is there a way to get better at multitasking? According to scientists yes. However, if you read closely, you'll start to understand that there are two elements at play. Firstly, to get better at the things you will be multitasking with, you have to exercise you brain both in the way it starts processing information and in the practice the tasks which you multitask with so your brain can process the individual tasks quicker. The second point to note is that we are not really multitasking. Time splicing... i.e.: doing things in serial very quickly that it appears as if we are doing two things at once. We just happen to have our attention focused on the most important task before switching to the less important.

My observations and closing thoughts:

• If you are looking for quality over quantity... and according to some research, quantity too. Do things in serial. Focus on one thing at a time and get it done.
• Multitasking will become essential as the years go on and more information comes our ways that we need to process and react to.
• Practice makes perfect if you are going to multitask. Just don't endanger yourself and others IF you do decide to multitask where you shouldn't have to.
• "The less we practice these habits of mind, the more we risk losing them altogether." ... "You can improve your agility at multitasking, but you will never be able to multitask and engage in deep thought at the same time." again taken from here.
• The extreme use of twitter a few months ago nearly killed my ability to stay focused and read anything greater than 140 characters. *twitch*

Whilst writing this article, I had 2 cups of tea and numerous discussions on various topics, I answered word questions, helped tested MyPhoneExplorer, read and replied to various emails, took a few phone calls, listened to my music, did research for this article and tweeted. Do I NADD?

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