multitasking « WordPress.com Tag Feed

Finding Minutes: Paying Bills with 3 year olds

octopusmom — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:25:37 +0000

Need to pay the bills, but your 3 year old won't let you sit down? Paying bills while trying to watch your children is a real multitasking problem. But not anymore...Try this trick. Open all of your bills and place the old envelopes, mailers, and other junk mail in a pile. Give your child a small box or two and have her sort them--- envelopes in one box, mailers in the other etc. Then hand her some crayons ( or markers if you are brave) and tell her that she is the postman and needs to write letters to send to everyone. My daughter sat there for 20 minutes coloring the envelopes and sorting them "like Mommy". If you have an older child. Hand them an old checkbook and a calculator and have them practice their math skills and enter the problems into the checkbook register. Simple and easy!! Then when you are done, store their checkbook by yours for the next time!

If you like my blog, be sure to visit my parenting website at www.octopusmom.com

Stoooopid .... why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it thinks

mtoigo — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:59:46 +0000

Stoooopid .... why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it thinks - Times Online

From The Sunday Times

July 20, 2008

Stoooopid .... why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it thinks

The digital age is destroying us by ruining our ability to concentrate

Bryan Appleyard

On Wednesday I received 72 e-mails, not counting junk, and only two text
messages. It was a quiet day but, then again, I’m not including the
telephone calls. I’m also not including the deafening and pointless
announcements on a train journey to Wakefield – use a screen, jerks – the
piercingly loud telephone conversations of unsocialised adults and the
screaming of untamed brats. And, come to think of it, why not include the
junk e-mails? They also interrupt. There were 38. Oh and I’d better throw in
the 400-odd news alerts that I receive from all the websites I monitor via
my iPhone.

I was – the irony! – trying to read a book called Distracted: The Erosion of
Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson. Crushed in my train, I
had become the embodiment of T S Eliot’s great summary of the modern
predicament: “Distracted from distraction by distraction”. This is, you
might think, a pretty standard, vaguely comic vignette of modern life – man
harassed by self-inflicted technology. And so it is. We’re all distracted,
we’re all interrupted. How foolish we are! But, listen carefully, it’s
killing me and it’s killing you.

David Meyer is professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. In 1995
his son was killed by a distracted driver who ran a red light. Meyer’s
speciality was attention: how we focus on one thing rather than another.
Attention is the golden key to the mystery of human consciousness; it might
one day tell us how we make the world in our heads. Attention comes
naturally to us; attending to what matters is how we survive and define
ourselves.

The opposite of attention is distraction, an unnatural condition and one that,
as Meyer discovered in 1995, kills. Now he is convinced that chronic,
long-term distraction is as dangerous as cigarette smoking. In particular,
there is the great myth of multitasking. No human being, he says, can
effectively write an e-mail and speak on the telephone. Both activities use
language and the language channel in the brain can’t cope. Multitaskers fool
themselves by rapidly switching attention and, as a result, their output
deteriorates.

The same thing happens if you talk on a mobile phone while driving – even
legally with a hands-free kit. You listen to language on the phone and lose
the ability to take in the language of road signs. Worst of all is if your
caller describes something visual, a wallpaper pattern, a view. As you
imagine this, your visual channel gets clogged and you start losing your
sense of the road ahead. Distraction kills – you or others.

Chronic distraction, from which we all now suffer, kills you more slowly.
Meyer says there is evidence that people in chronically distracted jobs are,
in early middle age, appearing with the same symptoms of burn-out as air
traffic controllers. They might have stress-related diseases, even
irreversible brain damage. But the damage is not caused by overwork, it’s
caused by multiple distracted work. One American study found that
interruptions take up 2.1 hours of the average knowledge worker’s day. This,
it was estimated, cost the US economy $588 billion a year. Yet the rabidly
multitasking distractee is seen as some kind of social and economic ideal.

Meyer tells me that he sees part of his job as warning as many people as
possible of the dangers of the distracted world we are creating. Other
voices, particularly in America, have joined the chorus of dismay. Jackson’s
book warns of a new Dark Age: “As our attentional skills are squandered, we
are plunging into a culture of mistrust, skimming and a dehumanising merger
between man and machine.”

Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta, has just
written The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young
Americans and Jeopardises Our Future. He portrays a bibliophobic generation
of teens, incapable of sustaining concentration long enough to read a book.
And learning a poem by heart just strikes them as dumb.

In an influential essay in The Atlantic magazine, Nicholas Carr asks: “Is
Google making us stupid?” Carr, a chronic distractee like the rest of us,
noticed that he was finding it increasingly difficult to immerse himself in
a book or a long article – “The deep reading that used to come naturally has
become a struggle.”

Instead he now Googles his way though life, scanning and skimming, not pausing
to think, to absorb. He feels himself being hollowed out by “the replacement
of complex inner density with a new kind of self – evolving under the
pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly
available’”.

“The important thing,” he tells me, “is that we now go outside of ourselves to
make all the connections that we used to make inside of ourselves.” The
attending self is enfeebled as its functions are transferred to cyberspace.

“The next generation will not grieve because they will not know what they have
lost,” says Bill McKibben, the great environmentalist.

McKibben’s hero is Henry Thoreau, who, in the 19th century, cut himself off
from the distractions of industrialising America to live in quiet
contemplation by Walden Pond in Massachusetts. He was, says McKibben,
“incredibly prescient”. McKibben can’t live that life, though. He must
organise his global warming campaigns through the internet and suffer and
react to the beeping pleading of the incoming e-mail.

“I feel that much of my life is ebbing away in the tide of minute-by-minute
distraction . . . I’m not certain what the effect on the world will be. But
psychologists do say that intense close engagement with things does provide
the most human satisfaction.” The psychologists are right. McKibben
describes himself as “loving novelty” and yet “craving depth”, the
contemporary predicament in a nutshell.

Ironically, the companies most active in denying us our craving for depth, the
great distracters – Microsoft, Google, IBM, Intel – are trying to do
something about this. They have formed the Information Overload Research
Group, “dedicated to promoting solutions to e-mail overload and
interruptions”. None of this will work, of course, because of the
overwhelming economic forces involved. People make big money out of
distracting us. So what can be done?

The first issue is the determination of the distracters to create young
distractees. Television was the first culprit. Tests clearly show that a
switched-on television reduces the quality and quantity of interaction
between children and their parents. The internet multiplies the effect a
thousandfold. Paradoxically, the supreme information provider also has the
effect of reducing information intake.

Bauerlein is 49. As a child, he says, he learnt about the Vietnam war from
Walter Cronkite, the great television news anchor of the time. Now teenagers
just go to their laptops on coming home from school and sink into their
online cocoon. But this isn’t the informational paradise dreamt of by Bill
Gates and Google: 90% of sites visited by teenagers are social networks.
They are immersed not in knowledge but in “gossip and social banter”.

“They don’t,” says Bauerlein, “grow up.” They are “living off the thrill of
peer attention. Meanwhile, their intellects refuse the cultural and civic
inheritance that has made us what we are now”.

The hyper-connectivity of the young is bewildering. Jackson tells me that one
study looked at five years of e-mail activity of a 24-year-old. He was found
to have connections with 11.7m people. Most of these connections would be
pretty threadbare. But that, in a way, is the point. All internet
connections are threadbare. They lack the complexity and depth of real-world
interactions. This is concealed by the language.

Join Facebook or MySpace and you suddenly have “friends” all over the place.
Of course, you don’t. These are just casual, tenuous electronic pings.
Nothing could be further removed from the idea of friendship.

These connections are severed as quickly as they are taken up – with the click
of a mouse. Jackson and everyone else I spoke to was alarmed by the
potential impact on real-world relationships. Teenagers are being groomed to
think others can be picked up on a whim and dropped because of a mood or
some slight offence. The fear is that the idea of sticking with another
through thick and thin – the very essence of friendship and love – will come
to seem absurd, uncool, meaningless.

One irony that lies behind all this is the myth that children are good at this
stuff. Adults often joke that their 10-year-old has to fix the computer. But
it’s not true. Studies show older people are generally more adept with
computers than younger. This is because, like all multitaskers, the kids are
deluding themselves into thinking that busy-ness is depth when, in fact,
they are skimming the surface of cyberspace as surely as they are skimming
the surface of life. It takes an adult imagination to discriminate, to make
judgments; and those are the only skills that really matter.

The concern of all these writers and thinkers is that it is precisely these
skills that will vanish from the world as we become infantilised
cyber-serfs, our entertainments and impulses maintained and controlled by
the techno-geek aristocracy. They have all noted – either in themselves or
in others – diminishing attention spans, inability to focus, a loss of the
meditative mode. “I can’t read War and Peace any more,” confessed one of
Carr’s friends. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more
than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”

The computer is training us not to attend, to drown in the sea of information
rather than to swim. Jackson thinks this can be fixed. The brain is
malleable. Just as it can be trained to be distracted, so it can be trained
to pay attention. Education and work can be restructured to teach and
propagate the skills of concentration and focus. People can be taught to
turn off, to ignore the beep and the ping.

Bauerlein, dismayed by his distracted students, is not optimistic. Multiple
distraction might, he admits, be a phase, and in time society will
self-correct. But the sheer power of the forces of distraction is such that
he thinks this will not happen.

This, for him, puts democracy at risk. It is a form of government that puts “a
heavy burden of responsibility on our citizens”. But if they think Paris is
in England and they can’t find Iraq on a map because their world is a social
network of “friends” – examples of appalling ignorance recently found in
American teenagers – how can they be expected to shoulder that burden?

This may all be a moral panic, a severe case of the older generation wagging
its finger at the young. It was ever thus. But what is new is the assiduity
with which companies and institutions are selling us the tools of
distraction. Every new device on the market is, to return to Eliot, “Filled
with fancies and empty of meaning / Tumid apathy with no concentration”.

These things do make our lives easier, but only by destroying the very selves
that should be protesting at every distraction, demanding peace, quiet and
contemplation. The distracters have product to shift, and it’s shifting. On
the train to Wakefield, with my new 3G iPhone, distracted from distraction
by distraction, I saw the future and, to my horror, it worked.

Multitasking isn’t good for you

rip — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:52:19 +0000

“Distraction” is the great keyword of this article at TimesOnline: Stoooopid …. why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it thinks. As author Bryan Appleyard puts it in his subtitle: “The digital age is destroying us by ruining our ability to concentrate.”

To the regular readers of Jochen’s Blog, this rings a bell: Jochen created the portmanteau-style neologism “digistraction” last year ...

[... continue ...]

Why Does my Husband Keep Telling Me to "Just Relax"?

tribbit — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:45:02 +0000

I am one of those people who is always doing seven things at once. It used to be called 'multi-tasking,' I think, but now I've read in several places that doing more things at one time just stresses people out. Gee, really? I never would have guessed!

I thought with summer here, I would have all this time to get stuff done that I was, honestly, too exhausted to do during the school year. But my list keeps getting longer. Here is a sample of how high I've set the bar for myself:

Work on home improvement things, such as: paint the floor of our concrete porch, finish faux painting my daughter's resale shop furniture, finish touch up painting from last year, finally paint our kitchen cabinets, put up trim boards that have been stuffed in a closet for months, finish painting in the bathroom, finish changing out old electrical outlets. This is just a sample, of course! However, I am happy to say that we have done a lot since moving in last June! This place was in need of heavy renovations before we could even live here...there were metallic monarch butterflies in the bathroom. Nobody should be made to live in that horror.

[gallery]

Read books. Why does this sound like a chore? It's really not, because I love books. But it takes time to read them, even though I read faster than most people. And time is hard to find! Try sitting down in a comfortable chair to read a book when a three-year-old is awake in your house. It is an exercise in extreme frustration! And I have too many other things to do while she's napping or sleeping to sit down and read! Let me just say, thank goodness she still naps!
Work on my scrapbooks. I have two right now that I want to finish, plus several more waiting in the wings. One is Sophie's from age one. (She's three now, so you can imagine how many more I have in mind for her!) Plus, I am putting together 2 scrapbooks of my parent's 2003 trip to Italy. My mom bought all the stuff, but a scrapbooker she is not. So I offered to do them for her. A lot of work, but they are turning out awesome! Plus it is good practice (and good samples) for when my business idea comes into being.
My actual job, as a preschool teacher. I have the summer off, but I want to plan for next year, plus I am dealing with those issues from my previous post. (I emailed my boss and she told me to write down my issues and send them to her. I don't think she knows quite how heavy these issues are, but I am going to do the letter and send it to her. Fingers crossed!) So I have songs and poems to gather, materials to gather, ideas and lessons for units to write down, etc., etc.
Be a decent parent while I am at home with my three-year-old all day, every day. You would think this would be easier since I teach three-year-olds for my actual job, but, sadly, I make many mistakes as a parent. I am not as patient as I would like to be, and I don't do as many "kid activities" as I think I should. It's hard to devote large chunks of time to playing dress up or mooshing homemade play doh or coloring pictures with that nagging voice in my head saying...shouldn't you be doing this...and this...and this, and this? It's one of those day by day things, I think, where I keep saying, "I'll do better tomorrow, I promise I will!"

There. A list of five things. Simple, right? Just relax, stop trying so hard. That's what I hear from my husband. His mindset is very different from mine. He doesn't have the constant to-do list in his head that I have. He is not the main house cleaner, child-raiser and bill payer. He gets to just plunk his tired self on the couch and shoot people for three hours in Liberty City because he has the "I work two jobs" excuse. But that's a rant best saved for another post...

Windows Live Writer

kyleteachman — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:07:51 +0000

My newest obsession is with my newest download from Microsoft. It is called Windows Live Writer and is a downloadable program that lets you post blogs you write in the app to one or multiple blogs. Special thanks to this site for the info on how to set this up!

Using Ping.fm was a great experience that let me update multiple sites with what I saw doing, and I wanted a way to update/post posts on different web sites so that I can connect with users who use many different types of blogs. So I can post this to both my WordPress.com and Blogger accounts.

I know there are probably other sites that do this, but I love the fact that this is an app that is on my computer, so if I do not have Internet connection, I can write drafts of post and publish them later. Not to mention I can have this in a complete other window than my web browser, rather than having seperate tabs for different blogs.

All in all I'm happy so far with this utility and will continue to use it to post to both blogs linked to above! I would encourage anyone with more than one blog, or looking to open a second or third blog to use Windows Live Writer to make posts that can be put on multiple blogs.

Leave me some feedback on what you think!

Multitasking Part 2

kyleteachman — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:03:24 +0000

A few weeks ago I posted a blog about multitasking. I talked about wanting a universal site that took all the mainstream sites and consolidating them into one.

I have yet to find a great one, and I'm not program savvy enough to create my own. Over the past two days I have been trying to broaden my scope of networking sites to increase my audience, but I still find myself opening my web browser to 4 or 5 tabs, trying to keep track of my sites and feeds. I began to use Ping.fm to try and consolidate my status updates on my Twitter and Facebook, as well as posting small blogs on this site.

I still find it hard, however, to be able to link all of these sites together. And let people all direct their focus back to this blog. This is my main focus, all the other sites I use are just extensions for people to visit that can then lead them to this site. The problem is that all these sites have specific features that cannot easily transfer between one another and so you are FORCED to have multiple sites.

I'm trying to build an audience but it's very hard to these days when there are more and more social networking sites trying to do the same thing. I don't necessarily want to be the next internet sensation, I just want people to be able to read my blog, give me feedback, give me tips on other upcoming tech gadgets, and share their blogs with me!

So I challenge you guys who are reading this, leave me a comment, ANYTHING, telling me what you think of this site, any reccomendations when it comes to tech, a link to your own blog or a friends blog, or at least subscribe. I hope you guys enjoy and be sure to check out my blog roll to see the other sites I'm on!

Effect of Minimal Hearing Loss on Children's Ability to Multitask in Quiet and in Noise

Callier Library — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:23:04 +0000

from Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of minimal hearing loss (HL) on children's ability to perform simultaneous tasks in quiet and in noise. Method: Ten children with minimal HL and 11 children with normal hearing (NH) participated. Both groups ranged in age from 8 to 12 years. The children categorized common words (primary task) while completing dot-to-dot games (secondary task) in quiet as well as in noise presented at 0 dB and +6 dB signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). It was hypothesized that the children's progression through the dot-to-dot games would slow as they encountered more difficult listening environments. This hypothesis was based on the theory that listeners have limited cognitive resources to allocate to any combination of tasks. Results: The dot rate of both groups decreased similarly in the multitasking conditions relative to baseline. However, no other differences between groups or listening conditions were revealed. Significantly poorer word categorization was observed for the children with minimal HL in noise. Conclusion: These data suggest that children with minimal HL may be unable to respond to a difficult listening task by drawing resources from other tasks to compensate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Superwoman :Having It All

dawkinswatch — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:50:59 +0000

Have you noticed that there is a vast difference between how men and challenges, have you noticed that women are usually much quicker to adapt while some men decide to lie and die when the going gets tough? If you do not believe me look at girls who get pregnant in their teens they do not sit there. Contrast that with how many men disappear and social security has to remind them of their responsibilities.

But sometimes you wonder how women do it, look at the expectations, have a career, start a family, be a goddess in the kitchen, bring up babies, network, go to the gym, be a fashionista, have romantic interest, find time for friendships?

The pressure has really increased on Women, it was much better when there was such a thing as a housewife, but it is a thing of the past, can you imagine if you told everyone that your career was a homekeeper at a half snobbish dinner party ? Probably they would not let speak for the rest of the evening.

You have say that the media shares part of the blame because they love to take a high flying career woman and make her a pin up. Do not get me wrong, there is a need for women to be encouraged but it is equally unrealistic for people to tell them they can have their cake and eat it. I will not be having a go at feminists as Stuff Black People Hate did.

But is it possible for women to be promised that they can have it all and nothing will fall apart? Maybe we should interview families of these women who have it all, obviously the children might have wished to have more time with their parents. Spending more time with your family is less glamorous than having it all, but glamour can be enticing but ultimately banal. But you still have to admire the multitasking skills of women.

"Multitasking": la publicidad no interactiva cada vez vale menos

Pablo Melchor — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:18:16 +0000

Hoy he estado un rato viendo La Sexta en mi portátil. Bueno, en realidad tenía La Sexta en una ventana mientras navegaba por varias webs esperando a ver si empezaba un programa del que me habían hablado: como suele ocurrir, estaba aprovechando los anuncios para hacer otras cosas.

Ver la tele en cualquier ordenador conectado a Internet es tan fácil como instalar Zattoo y hacer click en el canal que quieres ver:

[wp_caption id="attachment_76" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Zattoo"][/wp_caption]

Sin embargo, la experiencia es bastante distinta a la de estar sentado en el sofá. No lo digo por la calidad de la imagen (se ve muy bien en 350x290 y bastante mal a pantalla completa, pero eso es algo que pronto estará resuelto), sino por las infinitas posibilidades de "multitasking" (hacer varias cosas a la vez) que ofrece el ordenador. En el "zapping interactivo" puedo leer varios e-mails mientras descargo un archivo o terminar una presentación mientras espero el contenido en video que me interesa.

Pero no hace falta ir tan lejos. De acuerdo con eMarketer, en EE.UU. dos tercios de los usuarios de internet ven la TV (la de siempre) mientras navegan en el ordenador. Podemos mirar este dato de otra forma: sí, se sigue consumiendo mucha TV, pero el grado de atención que se le dedica es muy inferior al de antaño. De cara a la publicidad, está claro que no es lo mismo un anuncio observado "en exclusiva" que un anuncio que comparte el tiempo del receptor con un periódico online, una búsqueda en Google o un videojuego. Si la tendencia del multitasking se generaliza, los aunciantes deben ser conscientes de que el valor de un GRP será cada vez menor.

En un mundo saturado de medios que compiten por la atención del consumidor, ¿tendrá algún valor el marketing no interactivo?

Añadir a: Del.icio.us · Fresqui · menéame

It’s Not My Age – It’s Multitasking

stuartfroman — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:46:31 +0000

Speaking of being conjobulated, it’s clear that what’s happening offline is happening online as well, as indicated by a growing number of articles about the problems of information overload and multitasking. I’ve collected a few on The Writing Wiki.

This from an article on The New Atlantis:

“In the business world, where concerns about time-management are perennial, 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.’”

There’s some serious irony in this quote from “Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast” by Matt Richtel:

“The E-Mail Addict feature in Gmail is more of a blunt instrument. Clicking the ‘Take a break” link turns the screen gray, and a message reads: ‘Take a walk, get some real work done, or have a snack. We’ll be back in 15 minutes!’”

Get some real work done in fifteen minutes?

And social media just seem to add to the problem. From Betsy Schiffman in a Wired blog post on Web 2.0 Expo Preview: Torture by Information Overload:

“Now that the first burst of enthusiasm for social networking has died, people are realizing that web 2.0 is actually a huge time sink.

“Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Plaxo may have helped foster community and communication, but they’ve also added immensely to the flow of often-interruptive messages that their users receive, leading to information overload and possibly a nasty internet addiction.”

It’s clear that it isn’t just how much information there is but also the messy way it’s delivered. Facebook and Twitter pump out so much information, I feel I have to check in regularly if I don’t want to miss something important, but by design they display all posts as equal, so I have to look at everything, try in vain to distinguish what might be of value from all the noise, and then follow several links, by which time I’ve lost any momentum I had on a project.

Attempts to adjust workplace habits with 15-minute breaks from email or even email-free days are feeble and don’t account for emergent activity, or for the entrenched attitude that the constant information flow has high value.

What’s needed is a fundamental reevaluation of how we relate to technology, but if this happens, it will likely be the result of a slow self-correcting evolution spurred by profit and nurtured by technology itself in the form of user channels that separate important and unimportant flows and artificial intelligence that learns from profiles and usage patterns how to distinguish important information for the user.

Or maybe it really is my age, and young people growing up in the midst of the flow will give the lie to research conducted by their elders and be just as productive and just as scholarly as any other generation. After all, it’s hard to miss the irony of baby boomers –the first generation to grow up watching far too much television, who were still smart enough and productive enough to lead another major technology revolution – now being worried about the participation of their kids and grandkids in a far less passive technology.

Epocware Handy Taskman

mobile411 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:31:05 +0000

Epocware Handy Taskman v1.06 -s60v3

Be in full control of your smartphone with Handy Taskman easy and quick!

Find and start the desired application by typing the first letters of its name.
Create shortcuts in the Favorites list to start applications, call or send SMS to the Contacts with just one click.

Run Handy Taskman by pressing and holding Menu button (like the built-in Task manager).
Get full information about running programs and free memory left on the phone (RAM, Phone memory and Memory card).

Switch to, Close, Kill any application or Close them all in one click.

DOWLOAD

My Daughter, the Efficiency Expert

onebagnation — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:13:31 +0000

Today as we were driving to camp, my daughter noticed someone talking on their cell phone while crossing the street. She was scandalized (as only a 6-year-old can be) because it was unsafe to talk and cross at the same time (smart cookie).

I told her that yesterday morning while I was out walking I saw someone talking on their cell phone and that I thought it was strange to be on the phone that early while (presumably) exercising. There was a little pause, and then she said "well, you can get some phone calls done before your kids wake up".

HAHAHA!! my productive and efficient daughter! I wonder if she's been reading lifehack blogs when I'm not looking . . .

Perish the M-Word: Multitasking

cheekygoods — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:46:48 +0000

I don’t know if this shift is happening throughout corporate America, or just in my corner of it. It looks like our HR department is trying to wean us off of the small electronic devices that they gave us to improve our efficiency by giving us access to our work 24/7. They are also warning us of the hidden costs of multitasking–both to us as human beings, and as employees. Recent studies about attention and effectiveness in the workplace have shown that rapidly shifting between tasks can greatly reduce your overall effectiveness, both in the total time required, and in the quality of the work. In the last month I’ve attended two seminars with my department, both about personal effectiveness, in which the message was: “be present to your life and your job” (don’t multitask.)

But being ‘in the moment’ and letting go of the juggling are just part of the reforms that are happening. My whole department of 125 people spent 3 days in closed session with a trainer who revealed through a series of exercises and lectures, the way to foster what he calls “breakthrough thinking” in your life and work. At times his philosophy bordered on the spiritual and he definitely challenged some common assumptions about life. Some highlights are:

#1 We live entirely in our idea of how things and people are, rather than how they actually are. We never have direct access to actual reality, we only have our “conversation” or “story” about it. This conversation or story is conducted by our rather crude inner voice, the ego, whose only motivation is to look good, reduce risk and survive. This causes all kinds of stress, because our internal conversation then becomes an ongoing comparison of how life should be, rather than how it is.

#2 Thinking for oneself is vastly different than having thoughts (that idle stream of thoughts that is your internal conversation). Thinking produces possibility. Having thoughts just reinforces your “story” about “how it is,” and leads to resignation (in life, not necessarily in your job!) Thinking (as opposed to having thoughts) can create opportunity for change and growth when you actively ask what is missing from the conversation in your head. This is also true of conversations with other people. This part of the seminar was about showing us that purposeful thought and speech creates reality.

#3 Acceptance of what is happening to you is the only way to not be a victim in your life. (This is tricky and our group spent a lot of time on this one.) It goes like this: the difference between a victim and someone who simply undergoes an experience is that the victim “doesn’t have a choice” whereas the person who undergoes an experience “chooses freely after consideration.” His philosophy offers that, with few exceptions, there is no such thing as a victim. Even if your options are terrible (for example, having to choose between certain death and probable death); even if there is only one possible outcome (being in prison, for example), there is always the first and most important choice, which is whether or not to accept what is happening to you at the moment. Acceptance is a slippery subject. It doesn’t meaning liking what is happening. It doesn’t mean being happy about it. It just means letting go of the story that “this shouldn’t be happening.” According to this philosophy, saying that you don’t have a choice is choosing to be a victim.

I don’t have the energy that this trainer had to argue in defense of or against his philosophy. But I can tell you that as a participant I was uplifted and encouraged. Even ten years ago I would have been very disturbed by some of the thinking (like that there are no victims for example). I also felt I got over some of the discomfort I usually feel in these large group events. I always see myself on the outside, but I know that is just my conversation. The seminar also packed in much more about communication, commitment and responsibility. In my opinion it was all straight talk.

For sure, none of what he said is original thinking. It comes from various spiritual traditions, philosophers, writers and12-step program. Like all wisdom, you can hear it a thousand times and it doesn’t sink in, but one day you might hear one piece that really hits home. He did package it very nicely and appropriately for a corporate audience, and it was no less profound because it was shared in this context – maybe a little weird at times, but compelling. And folks responded positively as far as I could tell. There were several group interactions and those brought out the best in people. It was even openly acknowledged that as a group we needed to make more room for and give the mic to people who don’t normally speak up. We overcame our usual personality contest for 3 days.

I know these seminars are given with the bottom line in mind, but for once I won’t use that as a reason to dismiss it. It came at the right time for me as I’m freaking out about starting a business and trying to stay focused on my day job responsibilities that are ever increasing. The other seminar I sat in was shorter, and it was given by a Human Potential Institute trainer. It struck a few deep chords about personal definitions of success, and I also learned a lot about blood glucose levels. (Managing energy is even more important than managing time.) More to come on that later.

Meanwhile, be well, be present, and don’t spread yourself so thin!

Peace,

Kristen

Roping A Wayward Mind

jameswharris — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:21:36 +0000

In the excellent essay, "The Myth of Multitasking," Christine Rosen opens up with this 1740s quote from a Lord Chesterfield to his son that I can't stop thinking about:

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.

I wished my kindergarten teacher had started every day of class with that lesson because it's obvious that I have never accomplished anything significant in my fifty-six years because I've always been trying to do two things at once. I'm a jack of all trades, master of none kind of guy, and it annoys the hell out of me.

This morning's activities will well illustrate my need for focus and the pitfalls of multitasking. After my shower I started ripping CDs with my second computer, rolled out my exercise mat and started doing my yoga-like back exercises while daydreaming the opening scene of a novel I'd like to write, while another part of my mind kept reminding me to work on the short story I had been fleshing out in my imagination yesterday while exercising, and thoughts of three or four blog ideas buzzed like bees around these main ideas hoping to get more bio-CPU cycles themselves, while I was also trying to remember who I wanted to see today, where I wanted to go, and what I wanted to do with my Saturday.

If I followed Lord Chesterfield's advice I would have had a single-minded Zen-like focus on my exercises and my back would be much better for it. (I just jumped over to put a new CD into the burner and ran to the kitchen to feed our cats.)

After my exercises I got up and checked my email and stats on this blog page and followed a link to a web site that mentions John Scalzi's comments on fame, followed the link to Scalzi's site and then found a link to Wil Weaton's site where he discusses fame and then I found a link to Stephen Fry's site, also about fame, but a very long well thought out essay. This gave me an idea to write a blog post about how it's more rewarding to read a famous person's blog than to actual meet them for a few minutes.

(Next CD to rip, which requires getting up and using the computer on the opposite side of the room.) Before I could start writing that blog, while doing a previous CD change, I got the idea I wanted to reinstall my Roku SoundBridge, so I could play MP3s on my computer through my stereo in living room, and got up and went looking for it. While tearing through two closets trying to remember where I put the Roku, I got ideas for several projects dealing with organization. I have boxes and boxes of wires for stereos, computers, televisions, DVD players, etc. that I really must organize one day. I was slightly distracted by the tight squeeze of clothes hanging in the closet, making it hard to get to all the boxes and remembering my promise to my wife to throw some worn clothes out, when I finally found the Roku.

(Next CD) I was surprised by how easy it was to put the Roku back into service but I discovered something interesting. The Roku was listing the music from both my computers, iTunes on the main machine, Windows Media on two machines, and FireFly media server on the second machine. This revelation inspired me to write a blog about the most efficient way to serve up MP3 files in a home network. (Next CD) I wondered if I booted up the laptop if it would see that machine too. (A pause to go pet a sick cat and think about a blog about the pet healthcare crisis.)

As you can see my mind is very far from Kwai Chang Caine's focused mind in the old Kung Fu TV series. (I'll stop the annoying interruptions about the CD changes and other diversions while writing, but you get the idea about how I'm constantly trying to multitask.) If I was a Kung Fu master, I wouldn't own a wall of CDs and be trying to convert them to my computer library because I wouldn't be into owning things.

If I was a real writer, with a focused mind, I would get up each morning, work on my novel and not think about about a dozen blog ideas, or another dozen short story ideas, or even worry about organizing a CD collection, or care about my clothes closet or boxes of wires. I never finished a novel because, like Lord Chesterfield says, I'm trying to do more than one thing and there's not enough time in a lifetime to do all that.

On the other paw, I am pretty good at multitasking if I'm willing to accept that I do so many things in a half-ass way. I have four clunky websites (not counting several I manage at work). I read about fifty books a year, and see a hundred movies on DVD and at the theater, and watch several hundred TV shows and documentaries. I have a big collection of computers, books, magazines, CDs, gadgets, and other crap that I maintain and help do my part to keep the economy going. I read a zillion web pages every year, and my Karma level is excellent on Slashdot.

Task Switching

Now over at 43 Folders, Merlin Mann offers his opinion in a podcast also called The Myth of Multitasking. Mann's take is multitasking is impossible for humans, that people aren't parallel processing machines like supercomputers, and the best we can do is be very good at task switching. Furthermore, it's his belief that some people are good at task switching and others are not. The implication being that some people can easily bookmark their place when they switch tasks. Mann also believes once you discover you can't multitask, you will lose the anxiety over getting so much done and focus on getting the job at hand accomplished.

My theory is the human brain is a fantastic bio-computer that parallel processes on vast scales, but the conscious mind is just one thread that runs on top of everything else that can't really multitask, but like Mann suggests, can task switch. Whether this is a good feature of Human 4.0 is yet to be proved. Maybe multitasking will be a prominent feature of Homo Superior 1.0, but for now we have to decide what's the optimal operating expectations for who we are now.

Attention Span

Should I trade all that fun chaotic juggling to be just a guy focused on writing a novel? Is it even possible for me to be Mr. Zen Lit Man? This brings up the second lighthouse beacon of an article I read this week, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr in The Atlantic Monthly, that only fuels the fire of my desire to seek a simpler focused life. Mr. Carr confesses that Google and the Internet living has reduced his ability to read long works.

If we could multitask, the length of any working process could be infinite, but if we can only task switch, then the critical factor is the time segment devoted to each task. What Mr. Carr is suggesting is the Internet is making us used to living with short task segments and we're losing our ability to process longer tasks. This is an interesting idea, but I have to ask: Did people have the knack for focusing on longer tasks before the Internet?

Long before Google, magazines and newspapers were featuring shorter articles with lots of side-bars, and short attention getting blips of information. Television, with sitcoms and more and more commercials started dividing up our attentions starting back in the 1950s. The car radio has long had buttons to quickly switch between shows for those weak of attention. Imagine what the television clicker has done to our minds?

I too have found that I can no longer read hours at a time on a single book or long essay. I had a different theory as to the cause of this, and assumed I had been corrupted by audio books which allows me to listen to other people read long books. I justified my laziness by pointing out that those people are much better readers than I am, and that I learn so much more when I can concentrate on their readings.

So now I have two theories to test. There might be many reasons why I can no longer read books hours at a stretch. One that comes to mind is comfort. I get back and neck strains, and my eyes weary quickly. Large print helps, but to be honest, I genuinely prefer audio books. After reading Carr's article I will strongly consider my continual effort to multitask or task switch as a cause of attention deficit. I will admit that when I read too long on anything I get antsy for new input. The Internet might support my addiction for keeping multiple threads of thought going.

Conversely, if I'm going to be a real writer, as opposed to a blogger, I'd need to focus on one piece of writing at a time, and keep focused on that piece, draft after draft until it's perfect and I could sell it. In other words, I'd be forced to do ONE thing for weeks at a time. I don't know if I could handle that. Task switching might be natural, and the ability to focus on a single task may be a special talent. My friend Mike who is also a programmer says when he programs he feels like he's in a deep well and all distractions are far away. I truly envy him for that gift.

I can't take a crap without reading a magazine while thinking through a handful of ideas about what I'll do when I pull up my pants. What if I got up this morning and just worked on writing that short story I've been meaning to finish for years. The one I come back to the most often? And what if when I needed to consume or evacuate I'd continue to think on that one story. It certainly would help if I lived in a studio apartment with little beyond a bed, desk, writing equipment and four white walls. No wonder Pride and Prejudice was so great, there just wasn't that many distractions back in Jane Austen's time.

I guess the real question is whether or not I could do the focused thing just one hour a day? It's an obvious compromise of where to start. However, I think real writers probably sacrifice a giant pile of fun diversions to get a quality book finished. Maybe I just don't have that kind of mental makeup. If I found a magic lantern and the Genie granted my wish to concentrate, would I be happy trading in a year's worth of active diversions to produce one science fiction novel? That scares me. It sounds boring and lonely.

Dedication to Details

Last night I saw an episode of Nova about making Japanese samurai swords, and Friday night I saw a documentary that included a piece about a Chinese guy making traditional bows and arrows. In each case, these were complicated skills handed down from the past and required the artisan to devote his life to his work. Both documentaries pointed out that these acts of devotion to extreme details were being destroyed by modern culture. Few people in our society dedicate as much of their time to a single-minded objective, but there are some. Olympic athletes, classical musicians, and other successful people in any discipline.

There is always the chance that multitasking and Googling is common in society because that's how the brains of most people work. If I had a brain for single minded focusing I would be a person pursuing something very focused. We see all those enchanting martial arts fables, like Kung Fu Panda where a slob of a mind can be polished into a diamond-point jewel of focused attention. Is that really possible? Maybe such training is possible if we start as children, but I doubt it for middle-aged adults. Can I and others improve our minds with incremental improvements, especially late in life, well I think there's plenty of evidence for that.

We know that doing the crossword puzzle or the sudoku will exercise our brain, so I would imagine reading long articles from The New Yorker and The Atlantic will condition our mental focus towards longer attention spans. I would also assume we could follow Lord Chesterfields' advice by starting the day by making a short list of things we want to do, and then work on them one at a time. My closet is still a mess, but if I stuck with it, focused my mind, and only worked on my closet, it would be finished with an hour's effort.

A New Theory of Multitasking

I think some kinds of multitasking are possible and aren't bad. I wouldn't want to sit and burn CDs until I had finished all 1500 of them. I think I could safely work on cleaning out my closet, listen to an audio book and burn CDs and be a success if I finished the closet in a reasonable amount of time and did a perfect job. Actually, this may be a form of true multitasking, because my mind would be focused on the audio book story, and my body would be working to organize the closet and rip CDs.

People can do two things at once physically, but it's uncommon - like rubbing your abdomen in a circle with your right hand and patting your head with your left. I can't sort speaker wire and switch out CDs, so that would be task switching. But is it task switching or multitasking to listen to a book and do something physical that doesn't require much mental processing like walking, doing the dishes, sorting wire or swapping out CDs?

The Good Old Days

I think many people would like to return to the good old days of a less hectic life. They feel that life would be better if they didn't have so many programming events demanding time slices. Makes me wonder what my Main() loop looks like. The belief is we'd be happier with fewer function calls and more time where our CPU usage falls to 0%. Personally, I'd be philosophically happier if my log files showed more completed jobs, and fulfilled if I routinely shipped some fine 1.0 products. I have learned that achieving a zero email inbox is very satisfying. I don't think we need to become Amish or Tibetan to find happiness. I do think that learning to tame the mind is a worthy goal and all these mental lessons that are a byproduct of computer usage and Jetsons-fast living is helping us evolve.

I am reminded of some odd advice. A modern day guru, or maybe it was a comedian, suggested getting up every morning and pistol whipping yourself if you had crippling fears of being mugged. I wonder if I got up every morning and focused my mind intently on any kind of mental exercise, if I wouldn't build up some focusing muscles? If my flitting attention ever settles down to allow me to pursue such an experiment, I'll let you know the results.

Jim

Why we can't multitask

Patrick — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:31:30 +0000

Endelig er forklaringen på hvorfi vi mænd ikke kan multitaske, og jeg er faktisk lidt fornærmet! For min hjerne har åbentbart ikke udviklet sig synderligt meget siden stenalderen :-o

Source:Nyhedsavisen

the lack of multitasking

kels — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 04:40:41 +0000

A: (after playing video games for the last few hours) Hun, whatcha doing?

Me: Oh, I baked a cake.

A: WHAT??

Multitasking

surferblue — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:05:00 +0000

This is the age of multitasking, but I'm firmly convinced that this is not always a good thing. It seems that the more we divide our time among different projects, the less "quality time" each project will receive. Besides that, if we're rapidly shifting focus between multiple projects, I believe that we gradually lose our ability to concentrate for prolonged periods of time.

As an example of this, I will point out the loss of effective communication I've observed over the past few years. People are trying to do so many things that they don't have time to completely focus on anything. As a result, they often only have a chance to skim e-mail messages, reports, and other forms of communication. There is no time for in-depth reading or analysis. Ultimately this means that they miss important details. I can think of countless times when this has happened in the workplace. With more and more diverse tasks in our daily jobs, it seems that this problem can only escalate.

There are those who are very good multitaskers, but that still does not overcome the fact that they are constantly dividing their focus and concentration between multiple projects, and no single project can receive their undivided attention for a long time.

The New Atlantis posted an interesting article about multitasking here.

Multitasking: Essential...or Not?

howtoenjoyyourjob — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:58:19 +0000

Are you a multi-tasker?

I am – and I can’t see myself being any other way as I enjoy the stimulation. But my partner is single-minded and highly focussed on one thing at a time, and this works for him.

I don’t think this is a gender thing – it is based on the way an individual’s mind works.

Multi-tasking is considered a positive attribute in the workplace. In fact, it is demanded of the modern office worker.

You will be interrupted every few minutes by new emails, phone calls, meetings, demands on your time. On top of this, you actually need to perform your job.

Many of my colleagues have two screens at their desk, so they can simultaneously monitor email and work.

If you are not a natural multi-tasker, how do you cope with all these demands on your attention?

A number of books extol the virtues of slowing down, of focussing on quality tasks instead of the constant stream of interruption.

Studies have shown that multi-tasking can be dangerous. If we can’t drive and speak on the phone, how can we email and do the same thing?

If we are constantly moving on from a task, how can we accomplish anything at all?

Should companies encourage multi-tasking or is there a different way?

An alternative would be to have focussed periods of time without interruption that would enable periods of constructive work.

Some suggestions would be:

- Only enable the email servers between 8 – 10am and 3-5pm so people have specific periods of time to respond to email

- Turn on the mobile phone jammer during specific periods so that people are not distracted

- Schedule meetings only in the mornings when people have the most energy

- Have focus rooms where people can go and not be disturbed. Ensure that people get access to these several times a week.

Even these simple ideas are blasphemous in today’s corporate society, but perhaps more “work” would get done this way?

This is a great article on multi-tasking that goes into greater detail on this topic:

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-myth-of-multitasking

non c'è due senza tre

molengai2 — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:43:23 +0000

sto tenendo una conversazione su skype, una su msn e scrivendo post

Work Those Batteries, Girls!

Thomas Ward — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:41:28 +0000

As an environmentalist and computer geek, I recently found myself looking for ways that people could optimize their laptop's battery life, so they wouldn't have to depend on electricity as much (which saves our natural resources and some money on your electric bills). Upon looking around the Internet, I came across some handy tips and software packages that can help you optimize your laptop battery.

Dim the brightness of your laptop screen. The brighter your screen, the more energy that it is needed. The dimmer the screen, the less energy it uses. It will take some getting used to, but, in the end, you will have a much better battery life, which will conserve energy and make you a little more productive.
Cut down on external devices. If you are using a USB mouse (or any other USB hardware), unplug it when it's not in use. The devices themselves use energy that is taken from the laptop. By unplugging these devices, you will cut down on the amount of energy needed to power your laptop.
Run software from the hard drive, as opposed to CD or DVD. CD/DVD drives, like those found in most modern laptops, are the SUVs of the computing world. Instead of running your copy of "Halo: Combat Evolved" from its CD, use a software program called ISORecorder and the DaemonTools emulation software to copy your CD to the hard drive.
Go into hibernate mode, as opposed to standby mode. Hibernate mode completely shuts down the hard drive, whereas standby mode continues running the system. You also don't have to worry about losing your work, since hibernate mode saves your PC's state as is.
Do not multi-task! While multi-tasking can sometimes be a necessity, it can also be a major drain on your laptop's battery (I know, I'm guilty of this myself). Many word processing software applications, such as Microsoft Word, are now receiving the online treatment, which means you can now do your word processing and Web surfing in one window.
Be sure to disable autosave in programs like Microsoft Word and Excel. These autosave functions can put a major strain on both your hard drive and your battery life. Be sure, however, that you turn it back on whenever the battery gets low. Otherwise, you may end up losing your work.
After your laptop battery has died, recharge it for at least 12 hours. By doing so, you can guarantee that your battery will be fully charged and ready for its next use.
Remove the battery while the laptop is not being used. Most laptops have a "standby mode", which continues to power such things as the clock and calendar functions, even when the laptop has been shut down.
Add more RAM to your existing memory. The more RAM your computer has, the less it will rely on virtual memory, which means there will be less hard drive usage, which, then, equals less energy usage.
Clean out your laptop's air vents. When air can circulate throughout the laptop without problems, the laptop will perform more efficiently. Be sure to use a clean, lint-free cloth.

By following just these ten simple steps, you can optimize your battery life and depend less on electricity. Not only will this save our natural resources and keep pollution out of the atmosphere, but it will also save you some money on your electric bills, since you won't have to charge the battery as often.

Now, if you'll excuse me. My battery just died.

Ajutati secretarele FJO cu-n multitasking - sau c-o pensie

jmartziana — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:09:17 +0000

Iată un episod relevant pentru felul în care studenţii pot obţine informaţii de la secretariat:

1. Se intră la secretariat, se întreabă tanti dacă studentul/studenta şi-ar putea afla notele la materia X.

2. Tanti va trimite studentul la tanti secretară 2, care va enunţa notele chiar din "baza de date" a FJO, adică dintr-un document Word denumit după modelul "Juralism - Anul X".

Până aici sună bine, doar că la punctul 2, secretara vă va ruga să aşteptaţi. Motivul? "Nu pot deschide acum documentul pentru Jurnalism, că îl am deschis pe ăsta de la Ştiinţe Politice". "Păi şi nu îl puteţi deschide şi pe cel de la Jurnalism? Durează câteva secunde..." "Cum? Să deschid două deodată?? Nu se poate aşa ceva, dragul meu". Tâmpesc...

The List - Part II

Mary — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:04:45 +0000

The second part of my list of goals focuses on interpersonal issues and is a lot less concrete in nature than Part I. Though I still incorporate specific and realistic objectives, they seem to be less measurable. These goals are about overcoming longstanding tendencies and habits as well as looking at the ways in which I interact with others.

4. I will be more productive in various areas of life (household obligations, writing, activities, etc.):

by taking a shower and getting dressed every day. Also, I will do my makeup - after all, I am a Mary Kay lady! Getting dressed as if I have a job to go to helps get me going. Working in my pj's, though it sounds appealing, just doesn't work for me. I know this. So it just makes sense to dress as though I have things to do and people to see because I do!
when I designate two to three days per week for specific tasks. I know I'm not likely to spend every day cleaning (I hate cleaning!), but if I designate one day for laundry and one for vacuuming, I'm more likely to get them done and out of the way.
by delegating certain tasks to the kids. They're 7 and 9. They can take on small household chores. This will teach them responsiblity as well as aid in the saving of my sanity. Win, win. Yay!

I hate multitasking. I hate it because I'm bad at it. But I need to face the fact that today's world is multifaceted and fast-paced. I think I spend more time feeling guilty about what I don't get done than anything else. But I truly feel that if I start every day with a plan, I'm much more likely to get more done. And feel better overall. No, I don't think I have to accomplish everything on my list - remember, I'm being realistic. But with a little planning and keeping my goals in mind, I think I can accomplish more.

5. I will maintain and nurture my support networks:

by talking to at least one friend on the phone each week. I have lots of wonderful and supportive friends, but I find it gets so easy to forget that in the frenzy of everyday life.
by utilizing technology such as email and social networking to keep up with close friends. I just signed up for Facebook and MySpace. I'm not very technologically inclined, but we have such fabulous means of communication, why wouldn't I want to use them to make my life easier?
while visiting at least one friend each week. Technology's great, but there's nothing like getting together face-to-face. I have the best time with my friends, most of whom have kids. So why not pack the little monsters up in the van and go spend some time with other moms? Again, saving my sanity. I'm beginning to see a theme here.

6. I will work to spend quality time with my husband as well as with my kids:

by taking time to sit with him on the couch at the end of the day three to four times a week. It's so tempting to just sprawl out on the couch, exhausted, after the kids go to sleep. We should at least be exhausted together.
by making an effort to discuss the occasional issue when it arises, or shortly thereafter, rather than letting it go and grow. Things don't just go away because I choose not to deal with them.
by encouraging him in his own interests and pursuits outside of the family. Poor man never gets any time to himself. I think that women inherently need more of this, but I suppose men are entitled as well. So I'll remind him to do something he likes to do every now and again.

There. I've made my goals public. I'll also print them out and post them near my computer where I can revisit them throughout the summer. Reviewing your goals not only helps to make them stick, but also lets you know when they may require a little tweaking or revision, should you find things aren't working. I will revisit and revise my way to goal success!

you can read this post, it's very short

legendumst — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:40:27 +0000

I previously mentioned Josh Waitzkin's article on multitasking but I wasn't quite aware just how much this topic has been steam-rolling the blogosphere lately. It all started with an article by Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making us Stupid?". The response Carr received was overwhelming. Carr's blog features a lot of anecdotes from other readers who had similar experiences, and Christine Rosen's article, "The Myth of Multitasking", cites a couple of neurologists on the matter. A study quoted in Carr's article:

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

Talking of reading in the "traditional" sense: ages ago, I stumbled upon a website propagating slow reading.

multitasking « WordPress.com Tag Feed

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*the lack of multitasking*

Multitasking

Multitasking: Essential...or Not?

non c'è due senza tre

Work Those Batteries, Girls!

Ajutati secretarele FJO cu-n multitasking - sau c-o pensie

The List - Part II

you can read this post, it's very short

the lack of multitasking