The New Atlantis » The Myth of Multitasking - The Diigo Meta page

• 09 Jul 19
  

  gsheehy

  multitasking

• 04 Jun 17
  

  akeyeswriting

  multitasking wisdom labs learning attention culture

  • when people engage in “task-switching” — that is, multitasking behavior — the flow of blood increases to a region of the frontal cortex called Brodmann area 10. (The flow of blood to particular regions of the brain is taken as a proxy indication of activity in those regions.)
  • But his research has also found that multitasking contributes to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline, which can cause long-term health problems if not controlled, and contributes to the loss of short-term memory.
  • brain scans of people who are not distracted show activity in the hippocampus, a region involved in storing and recalling information.
  • “After all, information is power, and if one can process more information all at once, perhaps one can be more powerful.” This is techno-social Darwinism, nature red in pixel and claw.
  • Or, as the novelist Walter Kirn suggests in a deft essay in The Atlantic, we might be headed for an “Attention-Deficit Recession.”
  • When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention.

  4 more annotations...

• 11 Jul 16
  

  nurikoo

  Articles

• 13 Jan 16
  

  paul t

  multitasking

• 14 Sep 15
  

  Jakes Rawlinson

  Multitasking is BAD

  multitasking brains bad productivity attention

• 19 Jun 15
  

  hpratt20
• 04 Sep 14
  

  kweiss408
  • Meyer is optimistic that, with training, the brain can learn to task-switch more effectively, and there is some evidence that certain simple tasks are amenable to such practice. But his research has also found that multitasking contributes to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline, which can cause long-term health problems if not controlled, and contributes to the loss of short-term memory.
• 20 Apr 14
  

  Renee Stollery
• 08 Apr 14
  

  eyoung2019

  • In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”

     

    In modern times, hurry, bustle, and agitation have become a regular way of life for many people — so much so that we have embraced a word to describe our efforts to respond to the many pressing demands on our time: multitasking. Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as possible.

     
• 26 Feb 14
  

  Jen Wittke

  multitasking

• 25 Feb 14
  

  Carol Furchner

  multitasking brain fMRI attention divided-attention

• 12 Jan 14
  

  isardamov

  job skills technology

• 16 Aug 13
  

  Edwin Wood

  multitasking

  • “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.”
  • “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”
  • When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention

  1 more annotation...

• 28 Jun 13
  

  Todd Preston

  multitasking brain productivity

• 09 Apr 13
  

  Nikolett Hegedus
• 01 Dec 12
  

  Tomasz C

  multitasking

  • 1740s, Lord Chesterfield
  • “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.”
  • The word multitasking began appearing in the “skills” sections of résumés
  • office workers restyled themselves as high-tech, high-performing team players.
  • New York Times Magazine in 2001 asked, “Who can remember life before multitasking? These days we all do it.” The article offered advice on “How to Multitask” with suggestions about giving your brain’s “multitasking hot spot” an appropriate workout.
  • In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”
  • Dr. Edward Hallowell, a Massachusetts-based psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
  • he calls multitasking a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously.”
  • One study by researchers at the University of California at Irvine monitored interruptions among office workers; they found that workers took an average of twenty-five minutes to recover from interruptions such as phone calls or answering e-mail and return to their original task.
  • used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to determine that when people engage in “task-switching” — that is, multitasking behavior — the flow of blood increases to a region of the frontal cortex called Brodmann area 10.
  • Russell Poldrack, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that “multitasking adversely affects how you learn. Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.” His research demonstrates that people use different areas of the brain for learning and storing new information when they are distracted
  • Poldrack warned, “We have to be aware that there is a cost to the way that our society is changing, that humans are not built to work this way. We’re really built to focus. And when we sort of force ourselves to multitask, we’re driving ourselves to perhaps be less efficient in the long run even though it sometimes feels like we’re being more efficient.”
  • “I multitask every single second I am online,” confessed one study participant. “At this very moment I am watching TV, checking my e-mail every two minutes, reading a newsgroup about who shot JFK, burning some music to a CD, and writing this message.”
  • The picture that emerges of these pubescent multitasking mavens is of a generation of great technical facility and intelligence but of extreme impatience, unsatisfied with slowness and uncomfortable with silence: “I get bored if it’s not all going at once, because everything has gaps — waiting for a website to come up, commercials on TV, etc.”
  • the varieties of human attention.
  • “sensorial attention,” “intellectual attention,” “passive attention,” and the like, and noted the “gray chaotic indiscriminateness” of the minds of people who were incapable of paying attention
  • “Further research could help create clever technology, like sensors or smart software that workers could instruct with their preferences and priorities to serve as a high tech ‘time nanny’ to ease the modern multitasker’s plight.”

  15 more annotations...

• 18 Oct 12
  

  Alexandre Enkerli
• 13 Aug 12
  

  proberto J

  multitasking brain attention learning productivity

• 15 May 12
  

  Mary Fahey Colbert

  multitasking brain productivity informationoverload edtech attentiondeficittrait

  • In one recent study, Russell Poldrack, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that “multitasking adversely affects how you learn. Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.”
  • Also, “sensation-seeking” personality types are more likely to multitask, as are those living in “a highly TV-oriented household.” The picture that emerges of these pubescent multitasking mavens is of a generation of great technical facility and intelligence but of extreme impatience, unsatisfied with slowness and uncomfortable with silence: “I get bored if it’s not all going at once, because everything has gaps—waiting for a website to come up, commercials on TV, etc.” one participant said. The report concludes on a very peculiar note, perhaps intended to be optimistic: “In this media-heavy world, it is likely that brains that are more adept at media multitasking will be passed along and these changes will be naturally selected,” the report states. “After all, information is power, and if one can process more information all at once, perhaps one can be more powerful.” This is techno-social Darwinism, nature red in pixel and claw.
• 28 Apr 12
  

  Bobby Hobgood, Ed.D.

  In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”

  multitasking

• 25 Apr 12
  

  Shuang Ning Chin
  • erennial, warnings about workplace distractions spawned by a multitasking culture are on the rise. In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”
  • In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”
  • multitasking a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously.”
  • —costs the U.S. economy $650 billion a year in lost productivity
  • multitasking contributes to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline, which can cause long-term health problems if not controlled, and contributes to the loss of short-term memory
  • Russell Poldrack, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that “multitasking adversely affects how you learn. Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.”
  • “multitasking adversely affects how you learn. Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.”
  • “Kids that are instant messaging while doing homework, playing games online and watching TV, I predict, aren’t going to do well in the long run.”
  • People who have achieved great things often credit for their success a finely honed skill for paying attention. When asked about his particular genius, Isaac Newton responded that if he had made any discoveries, it was “owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.”
  • People who have achieved great things often credit for their success a finely honed skill for paying attention. When asked about his particular genius, Isaac Newton responded that if he had made any discoveries, it was “owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.”

  8 more annotations...

• 17 Mar 12
  

  Lydia Kim
  • “Attention Deficit Trait,” which he claims is rampant in the business world. ADT is “purely a response to the hyperkinetic environment in which we live,” writes Hallowell, and its hallmark symptoms mimic those of ADD
  • toll on the economy
  • This is presumably the last part of the brain to evolve, the most mysterious and exciting part,” Grafman told the New York Times in 2001—adding, with a touch of hyperbole, “It’s what makes us most human.”
  • brain is forced to respond to several stimuli at once
  • time lost as the brain determines which task to perform
  • “adaptive executive control” takes place, which “schedules task processes appropriately to obey instructions about their relative priorities and serial order,”
  • learn to task-switch more effectively
  • learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily
  • striatum
  • hippocampus
  • multitasking changes the way people learn
  • in 1999, only 16 percent of the time people spent using any of those media was spent on multiple media at once; by 2005, 26 percent of media time was spent multitasking
  • I think this generation of kids is guinea pigs
  • guinea pigs
  • attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention
  • honed skill for paying attention
  • owing more to patient attention than to any other talent
  • In the not-too-distant future we may even employ new devices to help us overcome the unintended attention deficits created by today’s gadgets
  • Perhaps we will all accept as a matter of course a computer governor
  • simply adjust
  • E-mails pouring in, cell phones ringing, televisions blaring, podcasts streaming—all this may become background noise, like the “din of a foundry or factory” that James observed workers could scarcely avoid at first, but which eventually became just another part of their daily routine
  • great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life
  • this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being

  21 more annotations...

• 13 Mar 12
  

  Sarah Schoeberle
  • “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”
  • the brain can learn to task-switch more effectively, and there is some evidence that certain simple tasks are amenable to such practice. But his research has also found that
  • multitasking contributes to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline, which can cause long-term health problems if not controlled, and contributes to the loss of short-term memory.
  • “Further research could help create clever technology, like sensors or smart software that workers could instruct with their preferences and priorities to serve as a high tech ‘time nanny’ to ease the modern multitasker’s plight.”

  2 more annotations...

• 09 Mar 12
  

  Sara Tilleman

  multitasking

• 07 Mar 12
  

  George Station

  multitasking brain learning attention infotention

• 06 Mar 12
  

  Matt Lane

  WilkesTechnology multitasking

• 25 Feb 12
  

  Katherine Bae
  • y letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not
  • y letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is no

  • n one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”
  • “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.”
  • “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”
  • In modern times, hurry, bustle, and agitation have become a regular way of life for many people—so much so that we have embraced a word to describe our efforts to respond to the many pressing demands on our time: multitasking. Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as possible.
  • Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as possible.
  • word multitasking began appearing in the “skills” sections of résumés
  • challenges to the ethos of multitasking have begun to emerge.
  • using cell phones and other electronic devices while driving
  • warnings about workplace distractions spawned by a multitasking culture are on the rise.
  • In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”
  • “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”
  • Harvard Business Review’s “Breakthrough Ideas” for 2007 was Linda Stone’s notion of “continuous partial attention,”
  • we are “constantly scanning for opportunities and staying on top of contacts, events, and activities in an effort to miss nothing.”
  • Dr. Edward Hallowell
  • Dr. Edward Hallowell, a Massachusetts-based psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and has written a book with the self-explanatory title CrazyBusy, has been offering therapies to combat extreme multitasking for years; in his book he calls multitasking a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously.”
  • he calls multitasking a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously.”
  • In a 2005 article, he described a new condition, “Attention Deficit Trait,” which he claims is rampant in the business world. ADT is “purely a response to the hyperkinetic environment in which we live,” writes Hallowell, and its hallmark symptoms mimic those of ADD. “Never in history has the human brain been asked to track so many data points,” Hallowell argues, and this challenge “can be controlled only by creatively engineering one’s environment and one’s emotional and physical health.” Limiting multitasking is essential. Best-selling business advice author Timothy Ferriss also extols the virtues of “single-tasking” in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek.
  • “Attention Deficit Trait,”
  • “purely a response to the hyperkinetic environment in which we live,” writes Hallowell, and its hallmark symptoms mimic those of ADD.
  • estimated that extreme multitasking—information overload—costs the U.S. economy $650 billion a year in lost productivity.
  • multitasking contributes to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline, which can cause long-term health problems if not controlled, and contributes to the loss of short-term memory.
  • brain scans of people who are distracted or multitasking show activity in the striatum, a region of the brain involved in learning new skills; brain scans of people who ar
  • cost to the way that our society is changing, that humans are not built to work this way. We’re really built to focus. And when we sort of force ourselves to multitask, we’re driving ourselves to perhaps be less efficient in the long run even though it sometimes feels like we’re being more efficient.”
  • “multitasking changes the way people learn,” what might this mean for today’s children and teens, raised with an excess of new entertainment and educational technology, and avidly multitasking at a young age?
  • uestion.” Media multitasking—that is, the simultaneous use of several different media, such as television, the Internet, video games, text messages, telephones, and e-mail—is clearly on the rise, as a 2006 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed: in 1999, only 16 percent of the time people spent using any of those media was spent on multiple media at once; by 2005, 26 percent of media time was spent multitasking. “I multitask every single second I am online,” confessed one study participant. “At this very moment I am watching TV, checking my e-mail every two minutes, reading a newsgroup about who shot JFK, burning some music to a CD, and writing this message.”
  • increase the likelihood of media multitasking
  • “I think this generation of kids is guinea pigs,” educational psychologist Jane Healy told the San Francisco Chronicle; she worries that they might become adults who engage in “very quick but very shallow thinking.”
  • Our technological governors might prompt us with reminders to set mental limits when we try to do too much, too quickly, all at once.
  • Then again, perhaps we will simply adjust and come to accept what James called “acquired inattention.” E-mails pouring in, cell phones ringing, televisions blaring, podcasts streaming—all this may become background noise, like the “din of a foundry or factory” that James observed workers could scarcely avoid at first, but which eventually became just another part of their daily routine. For the younger generation of multitaskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life. And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being. When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.
  • given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being.

  30 more annotations...

• 17 Jan 12
  

  mbduarte
  • In one recent study, Russell Poldrack, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that “multitasking adversely affects how you learn. Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.”
• 11 Jan 12
  

  multitasking attention

• 25 Nov 11
  

  Sarah Ngov

  Article by Christine Rosen. Busting the myth of multitasking!

  multitasking productivity learning brain education

  • When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention.
  • When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,”
  • their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

  1 more annotation...

• 02 Nov 11
  

  Marius Zachariasen

  ibrain multitasking attention productivity

• 

  arne krokan

  When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.
  
  

  multitasking

• 29 Oct 11
  

  John Lucero

  pretense articles

• 16 Oct 11
  

  S Chou
  • Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as possible.
  • Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as possible.
  • “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”
  • The psychologist who led the study called this new “infomania” a serious threat to workplace productivity.
  • “Never in history has the human brain been asked to track so many data points,” Hallowell argues, and this challenge “can be controlled only by creatively engineering one’s environment and one’s emotional and physical health.”
  • “multitasking adversely affects how you learn. Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.”
  • “Attention-Deficit Recession.”
  • When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention.
  • background noise, like the “din of a foundry or factory” that James observed workers could scarcely avoid at first, but which eventually became just another part of their daily routine. For the younger generation of multitaskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life.

  7 more annotations...

• 13 Oct 11
  

  Andrew Chiu

  CTD4C multitasking digitalcitizenship

• 19 Sep 11
  

  Michel Roland

  multitasking cerveau attention

• 12 Sep 11
  

  Cindy Marston

  Spring 2008 article in the New Atlantis by Christine Rosen

  multitasking brain productivity attention psychology

  • The picture that emerges of these pubescent multitasking mavens is of a generation of great technical facility and intelligence but of extreme impatience, unsatisfied with slowness and uncomfortable with silence
  • Like Chesterfield, James believed that the transition from youthful distraction to mature attention was in large part the result of personal mastery and discipline—and so was illustrative of character.
  • “The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again,” he wrote, “is the very root of judgment, character, and will.”
  • For the younger generation of multitaskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life. And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being. When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

  2 more annotations...

• 01 Sep 11
  

  Jane Mitchinson
• 24 Aug 11
  

  mitcholson
• 21 Aug 11
  

  Daniel Calloway
• 10 May 11
  

  Melissa Venable

  multitasking technology productivity

• 02 Apr 11
  

  Maryanne Burgos

  multitasking

• 12 Feb 11
  

  Nerine Chalmers

  multitasking brain learning

• 09 Feb 11
  

  Scott Eldridge

  brain learning

• 07 Feb 11
  

  Chris Bangs

  psychology

• 01 Feb 11
  

  Chad Schwaberow
• 19 Nov 10
  

  mary carrington
• 06 Nov 10
  

  Robert Wells

  multitasking brain

• 27 Oct 10
  

  Tim Kirk
• 09 Oct 10
  

  Shaun Stehly
  • “sensorial attention
  • intellectual attention
  • passive attention
  • In the not-too-distant future we may even employ new devices to help us overcome the unintended attention deficits created by today’s gadgets. As one New York Times article recently suggested, “Further research could help create clever technology, like sensors or smart software that workers could instruct with their preferences and priorities to serve as a high tech ‘time nanny’ to ease the modern multitasker’s plight.”
  • Then again, perhaps we will simply adjust and come to accept what James called “acquired inattention.” E-mails pouring in, cell phones ringing, televisions blaring, podcasts streaming—all this may become background noise, like the “din of a foundry or factory”

  3 more annotations...

• 19 Sep 10
  

  David Salahi
  • In the not-too-distant future we may even employ new devices to help us overcome the unintended attention deficits created by today’s gadgets.
• 30 Aug 10
  

  William McGrath

  to_read attention multitasking learning article

• 11 Aug 10
  

  Karen McCormack

  technology impact

• 05 Aug 10
  

  Ben Aslinger

  critical internet studies social media multitaskers productivity

• 30 Jul 10
  

  Charles Youngs

  brain learning multitasking productivity

• 03 Jun 10
  

  Yann Leroux

  multitasking myth

• 11 Apr 10
  

  Jocko McKean

  multitasking school success

• 07 Apr 10
  

  Chris Pultz

  psychology multitasking brain

• 14 Mar 10
  

  A little summary.

  multitasking

  • Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence.
• 08 Mar 10
  

  Page Lennig

  multitasking brain learning attention culture

• 03 Feb 10
  

  Alex Ragone

  multitasking article productive psychology culture work

• 

  Tami Brass

  distraction

• 16 Jan 10
  

  Erik M

  attention delicious

• 11 Jan 10
  

  Martin Lindner

  (good summary of mainstream US ideas - see false reading of W.James)

  attention_star5 multitasking_star5 delicious

• 17 Dec 09
  

  Lars Soderlund

  multitasking computer classroom computerclassroom computers professionalwriting professional writing

• 29 Nov 09
  

  Dennis Callahan

  productivity multitasking

• 22 Nov 09
  

  David McGavock

  For the younger generation of multitaskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life. And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being. When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

  multitasking attention brain culture learning

• 15 Nov 09
  

  Rudiger Wolf

  here is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a s

  multitasking productivity psychology

• 02 Nov 09
  

  David Wood

  publications
  
  Christine Rosen is a senior editor of The New Atlantis and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
  
  Christine Rosen, "The Myth of Multitasking," The New Atlantis, Number 20, Spring 2008, pp. 105-110.
  

  diigo

• 16 Oct 09
  

  Blair Kissel

  multitasking productivity psychology brain attention learning work article

• 18 Sep 09
  

  Laura Leh

  sensory_overload FPS

• 16 Sep 09
  

  Alex Kashdin

  lit review multitasking brain learning

• 15 Sep 09
  

  Andrea Saveri

  Today, our collective will to pay attention seems fairly weak. We require advice books to teach us how to avoid distraction. In the not-too-distant future we may even employ new devices to help us overcome the unintended attention deficits created by toda

  multitasking productivity psychology brain attention learning culture education work

• 10 Sep 09
  

  Kyle Murley

  This article appears in the
  
  SPRING 2008
  
  issue of The New Atlantis
  This article appears in the SPRING 2008 issue of The New Atlantis
  Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenewatlantis.com%2Fpublications%2Fthe-myth-of-multitask

  multitasking article attention psychology learning

  • letters he wrote to his so
  • singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence
  • multitasking
  • parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as possible
  • brain’s “multitasking hot spot

    • "Training improves multitasking performance by increasing the speed of information processing in human prefrontal cortex"
      
      [Neuron. 2009] - PubMed Result http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19607798?ordinalpos=5&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

    • Did you actually read the article? The tasks completed by the subjects in this study used up barely any cognitive resources. Most people can learn to pat themselves on the head and rub their bellies while saying Boo! whenever a visual stimulus appears. People who think they can rapidly switch between tasks that require greater cognitive resources are just kidding themselves.
    Add Sticky Note
  • 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London
  • 2007 was Linda Stone’s notion of “continuous partial attention,

    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_partial_attention
      
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Stone
    Add Sticky Note
  • multitasking a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously.”
  • “Attention Deficit Trait,”
  • ADT is “purely a response to the hyperkinetic environment in which we live,”
  • workers took an average of twenty-five minutes to recover from interruptions such as phone calls or answering e-mail and return to their original task

    • But how much MORE ARE they able to DO, BECAUSE of e-mail and telecommunication? Does increased productivity and responsiveness due to the use of such technology tools compensate for the "recovery" time caused by it's interuptions?

    • How can you do more when you lose that much time with every interruption? It just doesn't make sense.
    Add Sticky Note
  • “task-switching”—that is, multitasking behavior—the flow of blood increases to a region of the frontal cortex called Brodmann area 10
  • the last part of the brain to evolve, the most mysterious and exciting part
  • rather than a bottleneck in the brain, a process of “adaptive executive control” takes place, which “schedules task processes appropriately to obey instructions about their relative priorities and serial order,
  • with training, the brain can learn to task-switch more effectively

    • "Training improves multitasking performance by increasing the speed of information processing in human prefrontal cortex"
      
      [Neuron. 2009] - PubMed Result http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19607798?ordinalpos=5&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
    Add Sticky Note
  • people who are distracted or multitasking show activity in the striatum, a region of the brain involved in learning new skills
  • people who are not distracted show activity in the hippocampus, a region involved in storing and recalling information
  • Media multitasking—that is, the simultaneous use of several different media, such as television, the Internet, video games, text messages, telephones, and e-mail—is clearly on the rise,

  16 more annotations...

• 03 Sep 09
  

  Gerry Solomon

  more recently, challenges to the ethos of multitasking have begun to emerge.

  brain multitasking attention

• 01 Sep 09
  

  jlearn 2.0

  multitasking

• 09 May 09
  

  leahprice

  attention multitasking reading

• 01 May 09
  

  Tim Jacob

  meeting toread culture toprint

• 16 Apr 09
  

  rjem Jemtland

  multitasking productivity GTD learning

• 26 Mar 09
  

  Sean Dagony-Clark
• 14 Mar 09
  

  m k

  “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.”

  distraction

• 03 Mar 09
  

  Suzanne Robinson

  brain multi-tasking multitasking

• 25 Jan 09
  

  jowalters

  One chords by Johnny Cash at Ultimate-Guitar.Com, tabbed by Marcel Veltman

  multitasking attention

• 20 Dec 08
  

  ken meece

  ReadLater

• 18 Dec 08
  

  Doug Belshaw

  Article about the fact that 'multitasking' is just selective attention really.

  education ed.d. thesis productivity multitasking neuroscience

• 

  gsiemens

  But more recently, challenges to the ethos of multitasking have begun to emerge. Numerous studies have shown the sometimes-fatal danger of using cell phones and other electronic devices while driving, for example, and several states have now made that par

  millenials

• 

  SibiPoortman

  ICT literacy future learning

• 17 Nov 08
  

  Rebecca Hatherley

  But more recently, challenges to the ethos of multitasking have begun to emerge. Numerous studies have shown the sometimes-fatal danger of using cell phones and other electronic devices while driving, for example, and several states have now made that particular form of multitasking illegal. In the business world, where concerns about time-management are perennial, warnings about workplace distractions spawned by a multitasking culture are on the rise.

  multitasking productivity brain

  • “After all, information is power, and if one can process more information all at once, perhaps one can be more powerful.”

    • Can flow happen when multi-tasking?

    • Lillte streams make great rivers
    • 1 more sticky notes...

    • • Flow requires focus and concentration. I don't think it's possible when multitasking.
    Add Sticky Note
  • “I think this generation of kids is guinea pigs,” educational psychologist Jane Healy told the San Francisco Chronicle; she worries that they might become adults who engage in “very quick but very shallow thinking.”
• 06 Nov 08
  

  Judith Wakeman

  PIA multitasking learning MCDelicious

• 

  Judith Wakeman

  multitasking learning

• 04 Nov 08
  

  Tim Bunce

  GTD

• 22 Oct 08
  

  S Bardin

  article - multi-tasking - IM - children

  multitasking

• 17 Oct 08
  

  Michelle A. Hoyle

  In modern times, hurry, bustle, and agitation have become a regular way of life for many people—so much so that we have embraced a word to describe our efforts to respond to the many pressing demands on our time: multitasking. Used for decades to describe

  attention multitasking article productivity brain psychology

• 22 Sep 08
  

  Marita Aksnes

  Artikkel om multitasking

  multitasking undervisning ungdom læring

• 11 Sep 08
  

  When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

  tecnología psicología

• 

  Mikhail Moskalev

  article to-read english lifehacks lifehack learning science

• 01 Sep 08
  

  Suzie Vesper

  Interesting take on whether or not mulitasking or 'twitch speed' as I have heard it called is actually a good or bad thing.

  multitasking brain

• 14 Aug 08
  

  wordman

  It is, perhaps, telling that I read this while eating and sending IMs to a coworker.

  psychology gtd health for:eswoboda

• 11 Aug 08
  

  Inger Grøndal

  cognition digital_natives learning

• 

  Christian Sinclair

  interesting

Public Stiky Notes

• 
  Betzi Bateman on 2009-10-22
  Did you actually read the article? The tasks completed by the subjects in this study used up barely any cognitive resources. Most people can learn to pat themselves on the head and rub their bellies while saying Boo! whenever a visual stimulus appears. People who think they can rapidly switch between tasks that require greater cognitive resources are just kidding themselves.
• 
  Kyle Murley on 2009-09-10
  "Training improves multitasking performance by increasing the speed of information processing in human prefrontal cortex"
  
  [Neuron. 2009] - PubMed Result http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19607798?ordinalpos=5&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
• 
  Kyle Murley on 2009-09-10
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_partial_attention
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Stone
• 
  Betzi Bateman on 2009-10-22
  How can you do more when you lose that much time with every interruption? It just doesn't make sense.
• 
  Kyle Murley on 2009-09-10
  But how much MORE ARE they able to DO, BECAUSE of e-mail and telecommunication? Does increased productivity and responsiveness due to the use of such technology tools compensate for the "recovery" time caused by it's interuptions?
• 
  Kyle Murley on 2009-09-10
  "Training improves multitasking performance by increasing the speed of information processing in human prefrontal cortex"
  
  [Neuron. 2009] - PubMed Result http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19607798?ordinalpos=5&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
• 
  Betzi Bateman on 2009-10-22
  Flow requires focus and concentration. I don't think it's possible when multitasking.
• 
  Yann Leroux on 2009-05-14
  Lillte streams make great rivers
• 
  Rebecca Hatherley on 2008-11-17
  Can flow happen when multi-tasking?

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