I keep watching these ads for multi-tasking tablets. Ads like this:
It's a criticism Microsoft always had of Apple regarding multi-tasking and displaying more information on the screen. But is displaying more the right thing to do? Or is less really more?
The multi-tasking debate has existed for at least 40 years. In my early career, we all tried to multi-task effectively, taking phone calls while writing emails, presentations, creating complex spreadsheets, and doing other things. You never just did one thing at a time. And you were considered a hot commodity if you could do many things at the same time – fast and well.
However, this multi-tasking phenomena makes you feel exhausted.
The thing is, we really aren't multi-tasking at all. We are task switching.
Task switching, not multi-tasking – The term multi-tasking is actually a misnomer. People can't actually do more than one task at a time. Instead we switch tasks. So the term that is used in the research is "task switching".
–Susan Weinschenk PhD, The True Cost Of Multi-Tasking, Psychology Today
This is costly (up to 40% loss in productivity) and ineffective, but we continue to do this anyway because we have been trained to think that this is the ideal way to work.
Office environments encourage it and operating systems are designed for it (see the tablet ad above). It is perceived as a benefit. If you can be in the middle of reading and writing 10 emails, 3 documents, 4 spreadsheets and 3 presentations, while listening to a Webinar or an online meeting, you are considered to be a hero. I didn't say you would finish any of them or learn the information contained in each item, but you can definitely admit to being busy and doing many things at the same time.
More people agree that this isn't the way to work. Here's an example of someone who worked at Google and their experience of multi-tasking/task switching gone very wrong.
When I was at Google, I attended lots of meetings in which others had their laptops open. It wasn’t that these people didn’t care about what was being said. It’s just that they had lots of other things to do, and juggling several tasks at once seemed like a good idea.
It wasn’t.
Soon it became clear that many people were missing important stuff in meetings. They weren’t paying attention to what was going on around them because their brains were otherwise occupied. So the information shared in meetings never had a chance to break into their short-term memory banks.
Fairly soon, it became clear that having laptops open in meetings was lowering productivity instead of raising it. So we declared some meetings no-laptop zones.
–Douglas Merrill, Why Multitasking Doesn't Work, Forbes
Working on emails while being in a meeting even sounds ridiculous, but we are all guilty of it. And we typically encourage that behavior in ourselves and others even though it isn't effective. We overbook ourselves in meetings and feel the need to attend meetings we don't need to be in. Rather than focus on completing tasks and activities and absorbing information and knowledge, we throw ourselves into information overload and stay there, hoping that some of what we are immersed in will "stick."
Jef Raskin never felt that this multi-tasking or task switching in business was an effective way to design a system because the human brain didn't work that way. To him, people should be using a computer as they work in real life – doing one thing at a time.
In The Humane Interface, software philosopher Jef Raskin argued that the nature of human attention precludes all but the most simple forms of multi-tasking. Human beings, regardless of age or ability, can actually focus on just one activity at a time. Any additional tasks must be automatic, matters of semiconscious habit rather than ongoing deliberation. I can cop vegetables (semiconscious) and talk to my student (focused and aware), but when the child demands cookies, both flows are broken and when I fetch the cookies, I am not multitasking. I am simply engaged in a new chore.
–Julia Lupton, Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things
The iPhone and iPad were designed in a similar way – you can make a call (focused and aware activity) and read email (should be focused and aware, but let's say you do this as a semiconscious activity), but you can't read email and write a letter and do 40 other focused and aware activities by selecting a few keys. The apps may stay open and you can switch tasks, but you focus on completing one task at a time.
There is a balance between those focused and aware activities versus the semiconscious activities. When you are focused, you are able to move items into short-term memory, which later moves to long-term memory.
You need to get items into short-term memory and you can only do that when you are focused.
When you’re trying to accomplish two dissimilar tasks, each one requiring some level of consideration and attention, multitasking falls apart. Your brain just can’t take in and process two simultaneous, separate streams of information and encode them fully into short-term memory.
When information doesn’t make it into short-term memory, it can’t be transferred into long-term memory for recall later.
If you can’t recall it, you can’t use it. And, presumably, you are trying to learn something from whatever you are doing, right? Instead of actually helping you, multitasking works against you. It’s making you less efficient, not more.
–Douglas Merrill, Why Multitasking Doesn't Work, Forbes
And this leads to how creativity works, and why space is important to solve problems and why task switching can cause inefficiencies with new ideas.
The research on creativity tells us that it is the pre-frontal cortex that puts ideas together. But the pre-frontal cortex can only work on one thing at a time. When you are multi-tasking you are taxing your pre-frontal cortex. You will never solve problems if your pre-frontal cortex doesn't get quiet time to work on integrating information. This may sound paradoxical, but if you STOP thinking about a problem or particular topic you will then be able to solve it! This means you have to make time for blank spaces in your day. You need to have time in your day when you are doing "nothing" as far as your brain is concerned. Not talking, not reading, not writing. You can go for a walk, get exercise, listen to music, or stare into space. The more blank space the more work you will get done! Multi-tasking is the enemy of blank space.
–Susan Weinschenk PhD, The True Cost Of Multi-Tasking, Psychology Today
Raskin's vision for the information appliance accounts for all of these cognitive processes and enourages us to work in the most effective way possible (which gains us efficiencies with our focus).
He saw touch interfaces, however, and realized that maybe, if the buttons and information display were all in the software, he could create a morphing information appliance. Something that could do every single task imaginable perfectly, changing mode according to your objectives. Want to make a call? The whole screen would change to a phone, and buttons will appear to dial or select a contact. Want a music player or a GPS or a guitar tuner or a drawing pad or a camera or a calendar or a sound recorder or whatever task you can come up with? No problem: Just redraw the perfect interface on the screen, specially tailored for any of those tasks. So easy that people would instantly get it.
—Jesus Diaz, The Apple Tablet Interface Must Be Like This, Gizmodo
Sound familiar? Yes, its the iPhone and iPad, where the user is focusing on a single key activity at any time.
If focused activities are so effective, why are we enamored with task switching and multi-tasking? Why do we believe that seeing more and having the ability to do more at any given time makes a more effective user experience? Is it just the training we have received over the years?
I'm curious to hear your opinion. From what I read and experience, multi-tasking and task switching should be dead. I think we keep it alive because we think that this is a more efficient and effective way to live, when in fact it reduces our productivity up to 40%. And by reducing our productivity, we work more, multi-task more, get less good work done, and cheat ourselves.
It almost makes you see the beauty of the iPad and iPhone experiences and how they were really built for people. And how people weren't built to multi-task.
