Heavy multitaskers have reduced memory
news.stanford.edu
news.stanford.edu
Best way I think I can discribe it... it's almost like in my short term memory rather than trying to cram in every individual variable, I was just including a pointer to a struct containing the variables for those contexts. When I would call up that pointer, I'd get the entire struct and just keep going.
I'm not sure if it's age, alcohol use, stress, always-on internet, genetics, or what, but now I'm lucky if I can remember what task I'm in the middle of if I start thinking about something else while doing it. I find myself just as able to solve problems when I can remember things, but a lot less able to remember things, making me feel a lot stupider and/or slower than I used to be. Context-switching is a real challenge now. FWIW, I used to be A LOT better at tuning out the world/distractions than I am now; I feel like that changed when my kid was born.
I wonder if it's worth digging in to our situation more seriously. Is there a specialist we can talk to about this kind of stuff? Are there tests?
The only conclusion I've come to is, putting it simply, we're dealing with: a) more things b) more complicated things. I had less to worry about when I was younger and the problems were comparatively simple. Now I'm getting paid a ton of money to work on very complex systems. This requires juggling more information that's way more complex.
I dunno.
Also, there seems to be increased cases of ADHD in kids. She has told me that many times ADHD medication can increase executive functioning.
It might be worth investigating in cases like this.
Old people might say it's just part of getting old. Perhaps there's something more to it than that. Plaque build-up of some sort, for example, in memory processing?
Lucky thing it comes back once the stress is alleviated!
This is true to an extent. Motor and cognitive skills may diminish slowly with age but memory impairment diseases like Alzheimer’s and Dementia are /never/ a normal part of aging.
What's been happening to me feels like I have too many pointers. I can still jump straight back in without needing to rebuild the context, if I can find the right one, because it's still there. It might just take a bit to find the right one though.
On a tangent... I'm a heavy Org-mode (Emacs) user, and while many org-masters use a sophisticated setup to keep track of and analyze their tasks, I use a really stupid two-level approach:
- Every project has its own orgfile, full of important things to do. Nothing fancy, just a bunch of TODOs, sometimes with priority markers on them.
- I also keep an "umbrella" org file that is just a list of the project names, and a short bullet-list of the next one or two things needing doing in that project. There's no automation here, I just review the project files from time to time, and figure out what next-step summary to write in the "umbrella".
- If a project is more important than another project, I just put it closer to the top of the umbrella. No clever algorithm needed to calculate absolute priority levels from relative (project-specific) ones -- just move the pointer up the list.
- If a project needs to be put on the backburner, I keep the project file, but remove it from the umbrella. I might add it back again in a month or two if necessary.
- When something urgent comes up, or I don't have time to file it, I just stick it at the top of "umbrella" and deal with it later. Some weeks I'm just living "in the umbrella" with no time to be organized... but that's okay, when things settle down, I file everything and try to be more organized again.
So my "umbrella" file is my "bucket of pointers to buckets", plus a scratch-space for hasty notes. It's been working well for me for a few years now.
This really was a big tangent. :) Back to the real subject: I feel exactly the same way that others here do. I knock items off my list like mad -- I feel very efficient -- but some days I couldn't tell you what I did the same morning without consulting my Org files first. It's a creepy, vacuous feeling, but I guess I've accepted it as the price of efficiency.
It’s like my brain is saying ”Dude wtf how can you focus on this mundane task when there is a friggin dragon standing right behind you!!!??”
Meditative practice helps. Writing things down so they’re not on my mind. Morning pages, five minute journals, running, things like that.
When I cannot focus for shit I’m usually stressing out about something or tired. Sometimes both.
And then you underperform at work, causing more stress and less sleep. It's a nasty vicious cycle.
But the second is that everything is more complicated. In high school, you could just sit down and crank out some homework while watching Youtube videos and chatting with friends. And you would just sit down and crank out some homework.
Yesterday, I got into work thinking I was going to write some code, and... oh wait, this depends on chasing down an issue in code owned by someone else, and I need to get answers to some questions about how this other component works that I depend on, and this other piece of code I need to modify doesn't actually work the way I thought it did. Even within the same task, I'm constantly context switching between mental modeling, communicating with other people, and code reading/writing. Also, I'm reconciling all of this against a multi-stage rollout plan where different people will see different behaviors. It's complicated in a way that teenage me never really had to deal with.
It's no wonder I've spent several days feeling like I got nothing done. I did a lot of unwinding hidden dependencies, but very little of it was actually writing code. Most of my time was spent figuring out what questions were the right ones to ask in order to get the answers I needed, which might not end up being what I thought I needed.
Teenage me never had to deal with that kind of complexity.
Oh man, this really resonates with me. So much of my work time is spent manipulating the yak stack it's crazy. The feeling when you can just crank out some code with no external speedbumps is magical though.
I see this kind of distraction as introducing complication. When I was in high school about all I could do was listen to the radio on my boom box and even that was using too distracting.
Maybe another way to say it is that in high school math problems fit into a small enough chunk of memory that you could store it to disk and load it back into working memory in a few minutes.
On the other hand, I literally can't fit my current work project into working memory. It's just too big. I have to page it to stored notes. At the end of the day, I write to myself where I need to pick up the next day, and then the next day I spend 20 minutes following my notes to load that context back into working memory.
I don't think I'm bad at this stuff either, because my solo side projects don't have this problem. I can pick those up for an hour at a time and it's fine. But my work projects...
I suppose that’s because I insist on understanding more of the tech stack for my personal projects than I do for my work projects.
Maintaining bad code is in a lot of ways harder than creating good code. Or at least, a person good at one of those things might not be good at the other.
I have a related theory that software development as a profession is starting to increasingly resemble being an air-traffic controller; as the actual programming parts get easier (languages, tools, and libraries get better, awful code-bases notwithstanding), the non-programming tasks tend to take up more and more time. So, you end up spending a lot more time talking to people and figuring out what to build.
My Dad used to be an ATC and he always told me that he actually has fun doing it and loves his job. When I was little I was unable to comprehend how one can enjoy being in such a pressure situation. But now as I am older it makes more sense, as now whenever we are near a major release the pressure is still pretty high but I enjoy writing code and deliverying features too. Even if the code base is really annoying and the architecture of the platform makes me pull my hair out. It still is super satisfying to successfully do a release or when you fix that pesky bug. :)
Experience teaches you how to adjust for the right spot on the spectrum between "build for business value" and "build for maintainability."
Isn't that funny. Get the inexperienced folk to churn out features so the experienced folk can enjoy the nightmare of perpetually repairing the monster.
When we go into the world of unsolved problems that someone solved and we have to maintain them, and we can't understand them immediately, we call them bad. It's my gut reaction almost every time I'm confronted with something that doesn't immediately enlighten me, even thought I know it's the wrong reaction.
We are always comparing everything to the simplest and most solved problems that were easy for us to understand. When it isn't so easy we call them "bad".
That happens in code all the time. People do things in ways that are prone to problems because either they don't have the experience to know better, or they didn't take the time to think about the domain. I would call that "bad code", no matter how pretty it looks or understandable it is.
Part of the problem is that "good" and "bad" are far too vague, so everyone will bring their own meaning. You might see people using "bad" to mean unclear, but I would count that as a sign of progress. A imagine a "bad" mechanical in this day and age engineer is someone that does stuff that costs more money, either now or later when it breaks early, but still produces mostly safe constructs because that portion of the job is highly constrained, and when they fail there, they often aren't just "bad", but may be criminally negligent if they failed to adhere to both the law and industry best practices.
If were getting to the stage that "bad" programmers are just ones that write unclear code, that's a huge step up. Unfortunately, I don't think we are there.
I don't believe in this world of unsolved problems. Most codebases reinvent the wheel like they've never seen one. Most "problems" are just a problem of picking one from known solutions and gluing it all together. People don't always pick the right solution, or they start gluing at the wrong place and won't stop once they realize it, so the end result is a mess. And then you can ask, why did they do it like this? This is not good!
If you're a programmer, you've hopefully tried to rewrite some bit of code of yours a few times until you've arrived at something that eliminates redundant logic, is more readable and less buggy than the previous versions.. don't tell me they're all just equally bad?
I have written all sorts of implementations for things that I'm positive there's a library or existing example out there that is just plain better and more thorough.
The problem is, I don't know what it is. I don't know where it is. And finding it will take time, take effort to evaluate the non-good implementations, and take effort to integrate with other systems.
Whereas I can write code now which is "good enough" (or worse, just not good at all but exists and does something right now) and then move on and hope I'll find the "better" I'm looking for later.
But oh man, when you actually do write that one function that does the cool thing in a neat way and fits into the other crap you're wading around in without breaking anything in a way that makes intuitive sense... man, does that feel nice.
And sometimes when it comes to this I feel bad and somewhat guilty. But I can't restructure the whole trash pile and orders and budget constraints and all that, so it just has to keep growing and we shore it up where we can until it starts collapsing around the base and then maybe we can admit it was a trash pile all along and try to do better next time.
Great comment. This also happens as someone moves up in responsibility.
Also of note, I think good code is like a good plan. It's great, until it gets punched in the face. The reality is that most code is written to address constantly changing requirements with a slew of unknown unknowns. And while there certainly is a range from bad to good, what most people say is good will eventually give way to reality of constant change. The best we can do is maintain some semblance of good in this reality. I'm reminded of this excerpt from Musashi:
“What a fool I’ve been,” he exclaimed aloud. “I tried to make the water flow where I thought it should and force the dirt to stay where I thought it ought to be. But it didn’t work. How could it? Water’s water, dirt’s dirt. I can’t change their nature. What I’ve got to do is learn to be a servant to the water and a protector of the land.”
I didn't expect someone to read that as a historical detail as opposed to a point about the type of mental context switching high school students do.
I'm not that far out of my mental prime, I'm just far enough that I'm noticing it.
So, you got plenty done.
As you say, "It's complicated in a way that teenage me never really had to deal with". And that's really the nub of it. Not all complexity is reducible. But many of us can't escape the notion (perhaps an evolutionary drive?) that "there's gotta be a simpler way". To your example, if you hadn't unwound those hidden dependencies, perhaps you would have experienced more severe consequences at the wrong end of the process. So well done you for clearing your path.
But that's beside the point, this isn't a contest for who is older, I'm trying to point out that the work adults do is often less friendly to multitasking, and getting older doesn't help.
I‘ve started using a copy-paste history tool, and pretty sure it reduced stress and memory pressure considerably. I can just go back after half an hour and see the code snippets I might else have had to remember.
Creating calendar events with notifications - same thing. I just don’t have to remember most events because the phone will nag me about them, but paradoxically I now remember them easier.
Also, perhaps your sleep is not restorative since your kid was born? On the one hand, as a parent you get a little alert kit installed by nature, perhaps leading to lighter sleep. On the other hand, low oxygen in the sleeping room can be a thing, with multiple people sleeping there - I have way more dream call since opening the window just a little bit (just rotating the handle without actually opening).
- I write everything down that comes to my mind, immediately
- I keep a Trello board with 5-6 lists, 1 for work, 1 for private stuff, 1 for side-projects, 1 for books I’m planing to read. Only rule: it has to fit on a screen
- when working, I try to move away from the laptop as often as I can, I print things out and read them offline, make notes etc.
I think a lot of this is which skills you've been practicing. A lot of people practice attention in high school and college (e.g. being forced to listen to lectures or do homework).
You can also practice attention as an adult, and I think it will help in many cases.
It might be something simple. I was having similar problems. It turned out I needed B12 supplements.
A good, balanced supplement routine (or diet adjustment, but that's a lot more commitment) and starting the day with useful memory games (i.e five or so Duolingo challenges) has improved my memory, both short and long term, significantly.
I'd highly recommend last year's "Why We Sleep" [1] for more info on memory performance and how it's impacted far more that you'd suspect by full (and quality) sleep, which is in turn impacted far more than you'd suspect by alcohol and stress (not to mention kids).
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...
I'm surprised no one brought this up. This seems to indicate that it's possible that multitasking only effects tasks that aren't very important or hard, and that they have no trouble concentrating on tasks which require involvement. Seems to be an argument here that heavy multitasking isn't nearly as bad as the rest of the article makes out?
It could well be that your memory gets worse because you rely on technology to remember things for you. And because you know how to do that, you can switch between more tasks.
There are stories about how people used to remember lots of things back when it wasn't so easy to store information. And also stories about tribal people who haven't yet developed literacy being able to remember lots of stuff.
It’s pretty funny that we have adopted it as a tool for self improvement. If I meditate I can work harder, have less stress and better output! The reality is If you step into meditation wondering what personal gains you will get out of it you are already failing in a way.
Not the ones I have been to.
> The reality is If you step into meditation wondering what personal gains you will get out of it you are already failing in a way.
Well that is subjective isn't it? I enjoy meditation and feel like it has made me calmer and less depressed. I certainly do it because I think it helps my mental health and it seems to be working. I would personally consider it a great success.
What I do if I need to not be distracted: - turn off all essential notifications on phone - put your phone on silent - place phone behind your view to the left or right, upside down
This way if your family needs to reach you, they'll call/message and you'll hear it vibrate and handle it. Otherwise you won't even see it. Just make sure they are only contacting you for real things, and not to say hi, at least when you're trying to concentrate.
I am noticeably more focused / less anxious with my phone put away. Meditation (Headspace app) helps a lot too when my mind feels "noisy".
Slightly related: Almost all my "work music" is wordless, instrumental.
Programming tasks rely heavily on the language-portion of your brain, which are biologically hardwired to monitor your environment for speech, whether you like it or not. Anything sufficiently speech-like will generate an interrupt-signal in your head and steal some of your time and attention.
Slightly related to your already slightly related comment: SomaFM's Drone Zone radio channel has really helped me focus in our open space.
What does 'memory' mean? In this case it's "simple memory tasks" but that's not what these people have optimised themselves for so it's unsurprising that they'd perform worse at it.
"Leading triathletes do worse at 100m sprint" Oh no.
I mean: your example of a triathletes doing a sprint might be true (although a triathlete is probably still a lot better at that than an untrained individual). But there it is easy to see a connection (different muscle mass, different exercises to know what to do in a sprint). But why should there be a similar connectivity between different brain functions?
You make it sound like the gist of this article is obvious, in reality it's not, at least not for everyone. And even if it were you need research to actually prove it, that is how science works.
Calling being able to switch tasks fast, and a lot, an otimization is in a lot of cases a bridge too far probably. It's only optimal if you actually need it. While there are enough jobs which rather benefit from detailed attentaion to just one thing, not multiple. And not all people knowingly train themselves to be able to multitask, rather they fall into it because of addictions etc.
In other words, the sum of the task-switching is much less than focus on a singular task.
The context switch penalty between like tasks is small, the context switch between dissimilar tasks is enormous and generally will cause me to completely lose state on whatever I was working on, which requires me to rethread the needle, and restart.
The same thing goes for the discovery yesterday that not being able to hear and see when you are older affects your memory.
There're approved exercises to train your operating memory set like N-Back[1] and others, and bunch of free apps, I liked the least boring of them[2].
But, all that does at least minimum sense if you can change your working routine. These apps can be thrown to trash if you are a fullstack developer with infinite backlog of projects. And I can't maintain hanging myself on these training apps because it makes me feel like a lab rat.
Finally, I think the root of all that attention problems is boredom, anxiety and other social crap which never going to have been cured by any science. I wonder what results would be if somebody would try to find correlation on per country working time hours and playing online games. I wage that people who're supposed to focus on some boring work are either go find some freelance payload or kill some time playing games.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.owlie.brai...
> Well, we don’t multitask. We task switch. The word “multitasking” implies that you can do two or more things at once, but in reality our brains only allow us to do one thing at a time and we have to switch back and forth.
Jeopardy trivia is almost certainly a different type of (long-term) memory.
Completely unsupported and untrue supposition. Many people regularly perform multiple complex tasks simultaneously.
And maybe leave my mobile at home tomorrow!
Chimpanzees utterly destroy people in certain memory tests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkNV0rSndJ0 That makes them exceptionally intelligent by that narrow metric.
In others they're unable to keep up with some birds.