Multi-taskers doin’ it rong

Lincoln Russell 25 Aug, 2009 at 1:11pm ET Article published in Tech

Comments

1. 
   25 Aug 2009 ~ 1:13pm Snarkasm It's not that "multitaskers are bad at multitasking," it's that HUMANS are bad at multitasking.
2. 
   25 Aug 2009 ~ 1:14pm Linc Yes, and the point here is that doing it frequently makes you even worse at it.
3. 
   25 Aug 2009 ~ 1:19pm Snarkasm That wasn't the point of the article in the /. link you posted - the point was that people multitasking did everything worse than people who focused on the task at hand.
   

   /. wrote:

   For the study, multitasking was defined as consuming multiple media sources at once — gaming, TV, IM, email, etc. Interestingly, the habitual multitaskers were much worse at multitasking than the single taskers in these relatively straightforward tests.

   
   Emphasis mine.
4. 
   25 Aug 2009 ~ 5:17pm Linc Right... the habitual multitaskers were much worse at multitasking than the single taskers were at multitasking. I don't get what you're arguing about.
5. 
   25 Aug 2009 ~ 5:24pm Snarkasm As I was interpreting the article, it sounded like they had multitaskers do a bunch of stuff, then had single taskers do things one at a time.
   
   Perhaps I misinterpreted; the article does a rather poor job of clarifying itself.
6. 
   25 Aug 2009 ~ 5:25pm TiberiusLazarus

   Lincoln wrote:

   Right... the habitual multitaskers were much worse at multitasking than the single taskers were at multitasking. I don't get what you're arguing about.

   
   That's not really what the stanford tests were about though. The tests were mainly focused on having the participants ignore extra bits of information, remembering only the parts of a test they were told to. They weren't so much multitasking, they were trying to NOT multitask in an environment where they might normally do so. In these tests the single-taskers were able to excel.