| Compase § Cont eos? (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) lUsed 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 marshaling the ij i e o ° power of as Oo uiabitgs - 4 b th Lge of on pense In the late 1990s and early 2000s, one sensed a kind of exuberance about the possibilities of multitasking. Advertisements for new electronic gadgets — particularly the first generation of handheld digital devices — celebrated the notion of using technology to at once.(The word multitasking began . accomplish several thi Jctions of résumés, as office workers ™pnehy appearing in the “skills restyled themselves as high-tech, high-performing team players) “We have always multitasked — inability to walk and chew gum is a time-honored cause for derision — but never so intensely or self- consciously as now,” James Gleick wrote in his 1999 book Faster. “We are multitasking connoisseurs — experts in crowding, pressing, packing, and overlapping distinct activities in our all-too-finite moments’(An article in the New York Times Magazine in 2001 asked, cotta “Who can remember life before multitasking? These days we alldo _,, jt.” The article offered advice on “How to Multitask” with a suggestions about giving your brain's “multitasking hot spot” an appropriate workout.Podssn — of obpatitn But more rec A] re recently, challenges to the ethos of multitasking es a ile Post Hoe begun to emerge.(ftumerous studies have show the somelline reel hones and other clackimicdesicess Clogicat fotos lata danger of usi driving, for example, and several states have now made that business world, where ‘asking illegal. In the ennial, warnings about are on the have particular form of multit concerns about time-management are pert workplace distractions spawned by a multitasl rise, In 2008, the BBC reported on a research study, d by the Institute of. king culture funded by Psychiatry at the Hewlett-Packard and conducte' ed by e-mail and University of London, that found, Eworkers distract phone calls suffer a fall in 1Q more than twice that found in ogist who led the study called this 0 workplace productivity@ne of for 2007 was which might compere ' marijuana smokers?)The psychol “infomania’ a serious threat t “Breakthrough Ideas artial attention,’ ising mobile antly scanning for new the Harvard Business Reviews continuous P f multitaskin Linda Stone's notion of “c asa subspecics of and the Internet, we are “consté events, and activities in Teshiog ee Rertvebility be understood computing power and staying on top of contacts, opportunities hing?) Hovly Gpessalhiotinn an effort to miss not pr, Edward Hallowell, a Mas chusetts:based.psychiatristazho + se azes in the treatment of antion defictfayperactivity ca iad disorder and has wiiten a book with the self-explanatory title has been offering therapies to combat extreme CrazyBu. multitasking for years; in his book he calls multitasking a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more task: ‘asks conteluolct exgureet anew condition, he business ntin . Ingit Sena eousyin 2.2005 article, he described ention Deficit Trait,” which he claims is rampant int worldJADT is “purely a response to the hyperkinetic environme! which we live,” writes Hallowell, and its hallmark symptoms mimic those of ADD, “Never in history has the human brain been asked to ” Hallowell argues, and this challenge “ca” ring one’s environment and multitasking is Folet pilin Ferriss also track so many data points," be controlled only by creatively enginee one’s emotional and physical health” [Limiting essential] Best-selling business advice author Timothy The 4-Hour extols the virtues of “single-tasking” in his book, Workweek. post Moc oll on the economy. One study Jifornia at Irvine monitored (uitisking might also be taking at by researchers at the University of Cal e workers; they found that workers took ver from interruptions return to their original lege Orpen interruptions among offic an average of twenty-five minutes to reco) as phone calls or answering e-mail and ith the New York Times in 2007, ¢ business research firm Basex, Ged) such iscussing multitasking w task, Jonathan B. Spira, an analyst at th estimated that extreme multitasking — information overload — costs orhecle the U.S. economy $650 billion a year in lost productivity. ) Sligper CHANGING OUR BRAINS mee ie . fo better undarsia d the multitasking phenomenon, neurologists d psychologists have studied the workings of the brain. I 9 and psy 8 ne brain 1999,CB ebinolrelty) dag eon Adgunect conte! Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the Natiopal Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (part of the National Institutes of Health), used functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) scans to determine that when people engage in “task- multitasking behavior —Ghe 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 2 proxy indication of activity in those regions) (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.”) at makes multitasking a poor long-term such as those performed by psychologist ave used fMRI to dling multiple tasks. Marois switching” — that is, It is also wh: strategy for learning. Other studies, René Marois of Vanderbilt University, hy ‘demonstrate the brain's response to han se selection bottleneck” that occurs found evidence of a “respon Asa when the brain is forced to respond to several stimuli at once. sk-switching leads to time lost as the brain determines result, ta which task to perform. Psychologist David Meverat the University of Michigan believes that rather than a bottleneck in thebrain-a process of “adaptive executive control” takes nlace, which ;chedules task processes appropriately to obey instructions about their relative priorities and serial order,” as he described to the New Scientist, Unlike many other researchers who study multitasking, Meyer is optimistic that, with Training, the brain can learn to task-certain switch more effectively, and there is some evidence that rch has also ' simple tasks are amenable to such practice (But his resea found that multitasking contributes to the release of stres: hormones and adrenaline, which can cause long-term hea problems if not controlled, and contributes to the loss of sh memory.) sligp ey Slope. s! Ith ort-term ee 4 arf In one recent study, Russell Poldrack, a psffhsiogy 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: 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 are not distracted show activity in the hippocampus, a region involved in storing and recalling information. Discussing his research on National Public Radio recently, 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 wh of force ourselves to multitask, we're drivin €n we sort 8 ourselves to perhaps he igh it sometimes feels like lobgcry Fetympl gal less efficient in the long run even thou, we're being more efficient.” J 4If, as Poldrack concluded, “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? Poldrack calls this the “million-dollar question.” Media multitasking — that is, the simultancous use of several different media, such a5 television, telephones, and e-mail — is Kaiser Family Comprar the time people jple media at the Internet, video games, text messages, clearly on the rise,(as a 2006 report from the Foundation showed: in 1999, only 16 percent of spent using any of those media was spent on mult once; by 2005, 26 percent of media time was spent multitasking|(1 multitask every single second Tam 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, ing some music toa CP, and writing this message.” burn: factors that increase the likelihood (the Kaiser report noted severa of media multitasking, including “having a computer and being able ‘Also, ‘sensation-seeking” personality as are those living in “a highly TV- to see a television from it. od i itasl types are more likely to multitask, po oriented houschold(The picture that emerges of these pubescent a snultitasking mavens is of a generation of great technical facility and . jutelligence but of extreme impatience, unsatisfied with slowness mfortable with silence} "I get bored if it’s not all going at s — waiting for a website to come and unco once, because everything has gap: icipant said. The report commercials on TV, etc.,” one parti culiar note, perhaps intended to be ol? up, concludes on a very pe» states. changes will be naturally selected,” the report S ‘ ee + ss mM information is power, and if one can proce’ nists techn0-S verful.” This i once, perhaps one can be more powerful: Darwinism, nature red in pixel and claw. told ; Grafman Other experts aren't so sure. As neurologist Jordan nt messaging while doing Time magazine: “Kids that are insta dict, aren’t ne and watching TY, I pre oing to do kids are i i jon of kids ar going to do well in the long run.” “I think this generat i Id the San i P i hologist Jane Healy to net Suing’ educational psycho gi ay me adults WhO Francisco Chronicle; she worries that they mig! inki - ovelist engage in “very quick but very shallow thinking. Or, as the n ' i i ight be Walter Kirn suggests in a deft essay in The Atlantic, we mig! headed for an “Attention-Deficit Recession.’ homework, playing games onli it PAYING ATTENTION 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, Peo things often credit for their success a fit attention, When asked about his p ple who have achieved great nely honed skill for paying articular genius, Isaac Newton