Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Essays on multitasking non oppositional
The myth of multitasking Christine Rosen
Computer multitasking
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Essays on multitasking non oppositional
We live in a world where much is demanded of us than ever before and as result we turn to productivity to experts to help us cram as much as we can into our daily lives. In consideration of the pace we run our lives at, we turn to multitasking to become more efficient in a shorter amount of time. Multitasking is often considered the holy grail of productivity; it is said to allow multiple task executed simultaneously, thus allowing for greater efficiency is a shorter amount of time. One of the greatest pitfalls associated with multitasking is overestimating your ability to get a certain number of tasks completed in an allocated amount of time. Are our minds capable of such a task? Are there any associated risks with multitasking? Is multitasking the most efficient way of getting things done? What are our other options?
Multitasking is does not kill productivity if you are doing two things at once; for instance, washing a car while listening to the radio, but your chances of recalling the music or interviews because you are focusing upon the first task of washing the car.
Multitasking does not come naturally; consider how many sports exist that involves only one ball and how many of those players perform one single task. Consider how many insurance claims are made every year in relation to someone misjudging the space between their own car and another in front, and consequently running up back of the car all due to texting, emailing or another form of multitasking while behind the wheel of a car.
The human mind is not equipped with the necessary requirement for coping with multitasking that requires concentration as well as consideration, and short term memory can only store between five to nine pieces of information at any given time. Even if you are trying to accomplish two dissimilar tasks that both require attention as well as consideration, your multitasking abilities will fall apart and inevitably resulting in a lack of encoding into your short-term memory. The human mind cannot absorb or process two simultaneous streams of information and directly encode it into your short-term memory. If information is not encoded into the short term memory it cannot be impressed into your long term memory inevitably the information cannot be recalled, thus wasting your time and effort.
Multitasking is a source of stress. Frequent interruptions are a by-product of multitasking, which can lead to a sense of urgency, which in turn produces mental pressure.
Gleick says in his article that by the time Michael Hartl “heads for the bathroom…each morning, he has already got his computer starting... And then, as he runs to breakfast, he…[dials] into the campus computer network, and then gets his web browser started so he can check the news while he eats. ‘I figure I save at least two or three minutes a day…” While Michael is trying to get his computer ready at the same time he is getting ready for the day, he has the potential to rush himself through his hygiene activities which could lead him to not fully completing them. As humans we always want the extra moments in our days to stretch to the maximum that they can, even if it means that we have to cut something else in our day short. We like to be able to say we did more because it gives us a boost in our ego for the day. Doing more multitasking in our days does not always mean we did do more. Switching back and forth between tasks could also take up more time than to stick to one task until it is fully done. When we multitask we have to continuously change the way our mind is thinking and what our body is doing. This could take more of a process to repeatedly get started rather than maintain a single thought on a topic and continuously let it
Tugend goes over the impact of interruptions on work. She states that it takes a long time to get refocused after an interruption. Tugend notes that work gets done quicker when a person endures interruptions, but the work quality suffers greatly because of the increase in stress. She states that while other people are interruptions, the biggest interruption is ourselves (Tugend 717). Along with that, human attention spans are decreasing making interruption much more likely to happen. The time people spend on an activity before switching is not enough to really get into it (Tugend 717).
When we are doing a certain task we may get a text or we have to check our social media because of our addiction to it. These things cause us to drift off from what we actually are focused on. Sometimes we may be doing something, like reading, and our mind will subconsciously drift off onto another topic, like what our plans are for tomorrow. Some people do believe though that if the two tasks you are doing use different sections of the brain that it is all right to multitask. The example Restak gave of this was “an example of the principle of cerebral geography: The brain works at it’s best with the activation of different, rather than identical, brain areas. That’s why doodling while talking on the telephone isn’t a problem for most people, since speaking and drawing use different brain areas. But writing a thank you note while on the phone results in mental strain because speaking and writing share some of the same brain circuitry” (Restak 422). While this may be true, we still are not dedicating all of our time to just one specific task we are working
In response to how fast everything around us, our brain has had to adapt. In his essay, Restak says, “we can be at two places at one time.” For example, you can be talking to someone in person but texting someone else at the same time. Technology has made it possible for us to contact someone in the other side of the world without having to be there in person. This makes us immediately available in more than one place at a time. Yet all of this has to do with our ability to what we call multitasking. Multitasking is something everyone does every day whether they realize it or not. As I said before, when you are talking to a friend and texting someone else at the same time you are multitasking. This is just another example of a way the human brain has had to adapt. Yet this also may not be as efficient as many people would think. In his essay, Restak supports this when he writes, “When you are multitasking your attention at any given moment is directed more towards one of the activates that you are doing rather than both at the same time. Your frontal lobes (which are the main control centers toward the front of your brain) must shift goals and activate new rules of operation. You also encourage different sensory experiences, which makes it harder and takes even longer to get one thing done.” Our brains are designed to work more efficiently when it works on a single task. Until very recently our minds have had to
Though there are some positive effects, the adverse impact of technology on education has been extraordinary. The technology community has worked hard to bring useful technology into our classrooms, all with good intentions to broaden our knowledge. With these good intentions also came about unwanted side effects such as distraction and disruption in the classroom. I can clearly remember many of my teachers yelling at us to put our cell phones, iPods, and iTouch phones away especially during lecture and exams. The yelling was not without just cause, students cheated with their devices along with updating their Facebook pages during class too.
People live in a society that encourages getting as many things done as quickly as possible. Whether they realize it or not, multitasking as become a part of their everyday lives. They perform multiple tasks at the same time in order to save time. They use multiple electronics to take more in all at once. Multitasking can seem to be the more efficient way to handle things because people can spend the same amount of time on several tasks as opposed to just one. However, they do not stop to think of the amount of effort it takes the multitask and the consequences that can come along with it. Several experiments have been performed to determine just how detrimental multitasking can be. Attempting any form of multitasking
Paul has four main reasons why multitasking is a bad habit of a person when doing school homework. The first reason is doing assignment will take longer to accomplish because there are many distraction activities occurring. Paul uses the example of students using cell phones during class, where if you are paying attention to your phone, then you are not paying attention in class. The result causes students to re-examine their assignment to help themselves familiarize the material. The second reason is students can be tired and sleepy, which can make more mistakes on their assignment as they multitask. The third reason is students lose memory on the assignment they were given which divides their attention from doing other things at the same time. The fourth reason is when we are distracted, the information we received is processed differently making ourselves unable to concentrate. The last reason is multitasking can decrease student's school grades. According to the Rosen study, students who spend fifteen minutes on Facebook will have a lower grade. As comparison learning was more effective in the past, resulting in a new generation filled with
It is an interesting point and supported by the above claim that we can train our brains to become heavy or light multitaskers. Clifford Nass states, the issue is not about multitasking on related items, but rather when we are writing email, watching YouTube and on posting on Twitter about another social event (The Myth of Multitasking). “It's extremely healthy for your brain to do integrative things. It's extremely destructive for your brain to do non-integrative things” (The Myth of
The act of driving itself already demands a great amount of focus and concentration from the driver. Adding a cell phone to the picture introduces additional challenges for the brain. Researchers at Monash University's Accident Research Centre have shown that multi-tasking between driving and text messaging increases the mental workload causing higher levels of stress and frustration . For instance, stress is heightened when shifting from driving on a local route to entering a highway or vice versa. Using a phone (checking a text message, posting a Facebook status) contributes to increasing the complexity of the task at hand. This exhausts the brain, weakens the operator’s driving abilities, and compromises th...
However, I feel that mindfulness might be a way to address this issue because it allows us to focus on one task and reduce distractions. When I come home from a tiring day at work, I lie down to rest, but soon after, my iPad and iPhone both start ringing to alert me of emails, text messages, phone application updates, and others responding to my social media statuses. So, I take nearly an hour to read and respond to my emails and text messages. Next, I log into my social media accounts (i.e. Twitter and Facebook) and check my notifications, respond to these notifications, and usually someone sends me a message via Facebook, and a long conversation commences. Afterwards, I might spend an hour playing a game called Bubble Witch Saga on my iPhone, thinking that I have to keep playing to achieve level 700—I am only on level 112.
Multitasking with non-course material results in a student’s attention being diverted from the course material that is being taught. This can result in errors in memory for the student and also a more difficult time learning the information outside of the classroom (Kraushaar & Novak, 2010, p.1). The University of Vermont completed a study in order to determine the impacts of multitasking with a laptop during a university lecture. Through the experiment they were able to determine that “students with a high [and long] frequency of software multitasking during lectures will exhibit lower academic performance than students with a low [and short] frequency of software multitasking” (Kraushaar & Novak, 2010, p.6). This shows that repeated and lengthy multitasking with technology in particular laptops during lecture times can cause extremely negative results in a students academic performances and
Generally it is accorded that humans while processing information, they have a limited capacity of doing so and when processing several tasks at the same time, then the capacity can be exceeded (Dr Macdonald, 2007). By understanding attention than humans have an opportunity to set up an environment with an optimal learning skill since the identify problems with multi-tasking. A restriction on cell phone use while driving has been implemented due to the knowledge about human divided attention. This is due to the fact that there is limitation in human attention capacities, so driving a car while chatting limits other attention processes. The shift to controlled processing which is not as speedy as automatic attention, while driving may cause problems, in case a car pulls out in front of us. This explains th...
We live in a technology driven time when people multitask behind the wheel. The commute to and from work is a time many like to get caught up on emails or figure out plans for the day or weekend thought texting. The truth is that multitasking behind the wheel is very dangerous and could cost you your life. Text, emails, phone calls, makeup, breakfast; it all can wait! If you don’t make it home alive your weekend plans really won’t matter much anymore.
Technology has been always improving over the decades, and now it has improved to the point where it’s a part of a human being’s life. People can’t imagine living without technology anymore nowadays, and especially college students who are always on their phones and laptops during lectures. That leads to what is known as multitasking, which is the ability to take care of more than one task at the same time. Multitasking has been popularized by students, and specifically college students who think that they are actually successful at doing it. Unfortunately, according to Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, after testing students who think they are brilliant at multitasking, results showed that they are terrible at every aspect of multitasking; consequently, it is not successful.
The popular belief that multitasking is efficient, and the new-age generation is hard wired for multitasking, is highly misguided. Truth is, effective multitasking is an oxymoron. It’s not uncommon to see a person texting while walking down the street, listening to music while doing homework, or staring at a computer screen with multiple tabs and windows open. It’s hard not to multitask, given the amount of work people have to do and the non-stop information being thrown at them. People will do it as a force of habit; they think it will help them accomplish more tasks in a shorter time period. More often than not, they find it being the complete opposite. The brain can only process one activity at a time; instead, it switches gears, which takes time, reduces accuracy, distracts, and hinders creative thoughts. So, the real question should be: is multitasking actually worth the time? No, multitasking negatively affects people in all aspects of their life.