Comment by cobweb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cobweb | Hacker News Reader

I can easily go a bit tab mad. And noticed this in myself ages ago. At work I vowed not to look at sites that weren't work related. And instead checked personal email/sites before or after work. I was more organised. I even used to sit on the train and plan my days work. And it paid off.

These days I'm more and more distracted, have issues concentrating, and I don't have a smartphone, which I'd probably gravitate towards. It is in part, why I don't own one.

I also have congnitive difficulty reading from the screen, so if I stumble across something I think is worth reading, I send it to my e-reader. There I have a ton of unread articles. But I do tend to do one at a time, and it sticks better.

The young ones seem to be able to happily multitask, they sit next to each other on the bus or in cafes talking and surfing simultaneously. I find multi-tasking increasingly difficult, they don't, what gives?

My take on multitasking is that it mostly doesn't work, at least not for cognitive activities. But, I guess it depends on your definition of "multitasking" and "working/not working".

There are, perhaps, some activities which most people can multitask at - such as, driving a routine route while carrying on a light conversation. (But even that might distract from one or the other) But try something more complex - such as even trying to carry on a simple conversation while driving in an unfamiliar area or when you're lost - and quickly you'll find you can only focus on one thing at a time.

So, my sweeping generalization of people surfing and talking simultaneously is that if the two activities are very unrelated, (different topics) it's likely far less attention is being paid to each than the level of attention you're giving to reading your single article.

I am pretty sure in the past that it has been shown that talking on a moble increases the chance of crashing a car. It was a while ago that I read it so I can't provide a reference.

Anyone who thinks they are a good multi-tasker is disillusioned. Multi-tasking requires context loading and unloading, which always seem to have some challenges associated with it that are less than obvious. Don't sweat it. Being able to focus on one thing is a gift!

A gift that I seem to have lost over the years.

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