13 ms·

Heavy multitaskers have reduced memory

430 points by cabinguy 8y ago

Foobar8568 8y ago
One thing I wonder, if IQ would play something in this...
- jshowa3 8y ago
  In general, yes. A higher IQ is correlated with handling more complexity.
  - astrodust 8y ago
    It's just one factor in the barrel of nonsense that standardized IQ tests are. Chimpanzees utterly destroy people in certain memory tests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkNV0rSndJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkNV0rSndJ0 That makes them exceptionally intelligent by that narrow metric. In others they're unable to keep up with some birds.
- rcxdude 8y ago
  Working memory is something which some IQ tests aim to evaluate.
vectorEQ 8y ago
if you do multiple things at once you divide your focus over these things, and thus retain less of each. seems reasonably logical??
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  It's not "while multitasking". It's a stable attribute.
jcims 8y ago
I think i've multitasked my way out of having sufficient functional memory to remember multiple simultaneous tasks.
sys_64738 8y ago
Multi-tasking it is not but task-switching it is with a heavy penalty for the context switch. In other words, the sum of the task-switching is much less than focus on a singular task.
zappo2938 8y ago
I reason I work in fields that require multitaskers is because I have very poor memory. The code I was given to work with is incredibly complicated. Few people can work with it. Not having good explicit memory forces me to organize my own work and detect patterns. I describe my ADHD not as being aware of one thing then another thing, but rather, being aware of all things at the same time. Do they compare memory before multitasking and then after multitasking?
- Aloha 8y ago
  You raise a good point - are people multitasking because they have poor memory, or do they have poor memory because they multitask?
  - bflesch 8y ago
    That's exactly in line with what the researchers state: "It’s too early to definitively determine cause and effect."
Aloha 8y ago
So, I'm a frequent multitasker, but I generally arrange my tasks by likeness - so I'll do programming, then documentation, then design, then reading, and then perhaps troubleshooting. I guess it's a form of pipelining. The context switch penalty between like tasks is small, the context switch between dissimilar tasks is enormous and generally will cause me to completely lose state on whatever I was working on, which requires me to rethread the needle, and restart.
lordnacho 8y ago
Article says it's too early to draw conclusions. It could well be that your memory gets worse because you rely on technology to remember things for you. And because you know how to do that, you can switch between more tasks. There are stories about how people used to remember lots of things back when it wasn't so easy to store information. And also stories about tribal people who haven't yet developed literacy being able to remember lots of stuff.
polskibus 8y ago
Seems like most managers should fall into reduced memory category. They have to juggle more things during the day (on average) than specialists. A random email, meetings, etc. all contribute to this. I also wonder how smartphone usage worsens memory loss.
b1gtuna 8y ago
I try to avoid leaving a game or Youtube video open when I am "working". When I try to multitask, I get more frustrated. In the long run, the frustration turns into depression. So I try to tackle one task at a time nowadays. The difficult part is ignoring the phone. It is always within my view, if not within my arms reach. Just the sheer sight of my phone seems to take attention away from me. I don't know what to do with it though... I can't take it offline because my family needs to reach me. Perhaps a smartwatch would help?
- brobdingnagians 8y ago
  I totally relate to this; when I am multitasking I start getting irritable and frustrated. I do it a lot because I am trying to be ultra-productive, but I am starting to realize it would be better for my relationships and my work if I just take time to focus on one thing at a time; including the context that when I am not working, I don't think about working.
  - b1gtuna 8y ago
    Thanks for bringing up the term ultra-productive. That's exactly why I began multitasking only to realize it is just far better to work on one thing at a time for the performance and for my happiness. It took me a long time to realize this, but I am glad I figured it out.
- rifung 8y ago
  Have you tried meditating? If I understand correctly it is supposed to train you to do exactly what you want: to be able to focus intently on one thing and not get distracted.
  - b1gtuna 8y ago
    Funny you should mention meditation. It is something I am trying to incorporate into my life since early this year. Nothing fancy, I just use some guided meditation I find (usually 10 min long) and close my office door and listen to it. Unfortunately, I have yet to experience the full benefit of meditation since I only manage 2 sessions a week. However, when I it properly (ie, I don't get interrupted), I breathe better, my body is relaxed, and the head is clear.
cgriswald 8y ago
I used to have 'buckets' I would stick things into, and they would stay there forever. Context switching was not a problem. Whatever I had put in that bucket was so strongly associated with the context, that when I switched, the bucket would be there waiting for me. I think I basically had built something like a memory palace before I had the concept of a memory palace. Best way I think I can discribe it... it's almost like in my short term memory rather than trying to cram in every individual variable, I was just including a pointer to a struct containing the variables for those contexts. When I would call up that pointer, I'd get the entire struct and just keep going. I'm not sure if it's age, alcohol use, stress, always-on internet, genetics, or what, but now I'm lucky if I can remember what task I'm in the middle of if I start thinking about something else while doing it. I find myself just as able to solve problems when I can remember things, but a lot less able to remember things, making me feel a lot stupider and/or slower than I used to be. Context-switching is a real challenge now. FWIW, I used to be A LOT better at tuning out the world/distractions than I am now; I feel like that changed when my kid was born.
- bytematic 8y ago
  That is pretty close to how I think too. I also rarely commit things to memory which are easily referencable, which is annoying.
  - a-dub 8y ago
    I like to joke that this is the reason why Google does their silly on-the-spot interviews where they expect people to recall algorithms from memory... They know that the machine they've built erases the need to memorize anything, that people are adapting to it and they want to make sure that if the day ever comes when their whole thing comes crashing down, there's a flying chance in hell that they'll have people on staff who can rebuild a search engine, without a working search engine, before society descends into Idiocracy.
- 0xFACEFEED 8y ago
  I've been going through exactly the same issue since my kid was born (in my early 30s now). Reading your post was weird. I wonder if it's worth digging in to our situation more seriously. Is there a specialist we can talk to about this kind of stuff? Are there tests? The only conclusion I've come to is, putting it simply, we're dealing with: a) more things b) more complicated things. I had less to worry about when I was younger and the problems were comparatively simple. Now I'm getting paid a ton of money to work on very complex systems. This requires juggling more information that's way more complex. I dunno.
polskibus 8y ago
Shouldn't the title be updated to mention media multitasking?
kzrdude 8y ago
Have they controlled for sleep? This year I've made so many gains by sleeping well, that everything looks like a sleep problem to me.
taneq 8y ago
Heavy multitaskers have reduced... what now? What does 'memory' mean? In this case it's "simple memory tasks" but that's not what these people have optimised themselves for so it's unsurprising that they'd perform worse at it. "Leading triathletes do worse at 100m sprint" Oh no.
- chki 8y ago
  To me the connection between performing multitasking and therefore loosing your ability to memorize things is not at all obvious. And for it to be obvious (I think) one would probably need to know a lot more about the brain than we currently do. I mean: your example of a triathletes doing a sprint might be true (although a triathlete is probably still a lot better at that than an untrained individual). But there it is easy to see a connection (different muscle mass, different exercises to know what to do in a sprint). But why should there be a similar connectivity between different brain functions?
- stinos 8y ago
  Those simple memory tasks may very well be representative for whetever definition of memory you want to use - as long as that definition is close enough to the definition as found in dictionaries etc, and which is the general and established term for what is meant here. You make it sound like the gist of this article is obvious, in reality it's not, at least not for everyone. And even if it were you need research to actually prove it, that is how science works. Calling being able to switch tasks fast, and a lot, an otimization is in a lot of cases a bridge too far probably. It's only optimal if you actually need it. While there are enough jobs which rather benefit from detailed attentaion to just one thing, not multiple. And not all people knowingly train themselves to be able to multitask, rather they fall into it because of addictions etc.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  I wonder if the cause and effect is backwards here - maybe people with poor memory multitask because they can’t concentrate.
jaxtellerSoA 8y ago
I would argue that humans can't multitask at all, period, full stop. At best we can rapidly switch what our brain is focused on.
- jventura 8y ago
  I can walk and talk at the same time, two tasks. Maybe we could say that humans can't do many cognitively hard tasks at the same time..
Eli_P 8y ago
Considering natural property of brain's neuroplasticity and adaptation, you can rewire and retrain your brain. The title is just saying: if you lift weights three times of yours, you can't go to marathon. There're approved exercises to train your operating memory set like N-Back[1] and others, and bunch of free apps, I liked the least boring of them[2]. But, all that does at least minimum sense if you can change your working routine. These apps can be thrown to trash if you are a fullstack developer with infinite backlog of projects. And I can't maintain hanging myself on these training apps because it makes me feel like a lab rat. Finally, I think the root of all that attention problems is boredom, anxiety and other social crap which never going to have been cured by any science. I wonder what results would be if somebody would try to find correlation on per country working time hours and playing online games. I wage that people who're supposed to focus on some boring work are either go find some freelance payload or kill some time playing games. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.owlie.braingame&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.owlie.brai...
- anontechworker 8y ago
  On the note of brain games, there have been studies on their effectiveness. You can read more from the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/07/10/brain-training-games-dont-really-train-brains-a-new-study-suggests https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/0...
- dwaltrip 8y ago
  From that wikipedia article, seems there is some uncertainty as to how effective n-back actually is at improving working memory in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back#Construct_validity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back#Construct_validity
andy_ppp 8y ago
I think I'll switch on noprocrast then... And maybe leave my mobile at home tomorrow!
Kaveren 8y ago
> "in heavy media multitaskers because they have a higher probability of experiencing lapses of attention. When demands are low, they underperform. But, when the task demands are high, such as when the working memory tasks are harder, there’s no difference between the heavy and light media multitaskers. I'm surprised no one brought this up. This seems to indicate that it's possible that multitasking only effects tasks that aren't very important or hard, and that they have no trouble concentrating on tasks which require involvement. Seems to be an argument here that heavy multitasking isn't nearly as bad as the rest of the article makes out?
matachuan 8y ago
Well my first thought on this is multitaskers have reduced their RAM size and I'm completely lost.
StanislavPetrov 8y ago
>but in reality our brains only allow us to do one thing at a time and we have to switch back and forth. Completely unsupported and untrue supposition. Many people regularly perform multiple complex tasks simultaneously.
Jenz 8y ago
Oops, I should be worried, but very shortly, I might have forgotten about this.
kintai_bridge 8y ago
I've always been good in Jeopardy. I suppose I'm a well of useless trivia. Well, the other night I tuned in to Jeopardy after years of not watching the show. (Literally years because I've been busy with my job and life.) I was surprised at how quick I was, as before, and didn't skip a beat. Somehow I can retrieve the same data after stagnant use in my brain. The reason I'm pointing this out is because I'm also a classic multi-tasker at my developer job and can relate to this article. The difficulty I have is not from a memory decline, but something else. The nature of work has changed. It's like the quest for higher profits--same with work.
- notfed 8y ago
  The article mentions that there are different types of memory, and that "working" memory, i.e. short-term, is the type that was found to be "reduced" by the study. Jeopardy trivia is almost certainly a different type of (long-term) memory.
gamesbrainiac 8y ago
What I have found very help is keeping a log of everything that I am doing on a single task. So ever 15 minutes or so, I just write done a small paragraph or even a sentence of what is going on for a particular task. I find that doing this really helps me get back on track if I am disturbed or have to focus on something else for a short while.
rednerrus 8y ago
Memory is about focus and observation. It shouldn't come as a surprise that people who are not focusing or observing are not going to remember very well. The same thing goes for the discovery yesterday that not being able to hear and see when you are older affects your memory.
systematical 8y ago
Not even a processor can multitask. Why would you think humans can. I love explaining that to people and destroying the computers can multitask myth.
- usaphp 8y ago
  From the article: > Well, we don’t multitask. We task switch. The word “multitasking” implies that you can do two or more things at once, but in reality our brains only allow us to do one thing at a time and we have to switch back and forth.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
Wouldn't neuro plasticity dictate that something is gained from the loss? That is, as the brain re-wires itself memory is shifted to the more immediate need. That is processing power.
Proven 8y ago
It's not reduced, it's self-adjusted to store less in order to not slow down multitasking.
known 8y ago
Women's brain is horizontally wired for multitasking. http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains-differ http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains...
agumonkey 8y ago
Is multitasking impossible ? Singer/player do multiple things on near parallel if not fully so.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  ps: to be serious, I even think that either use a very peculiar abstraction layer of the brain (juggling multiple inertial bodies while keeping some sort of coherent space-field [aka rhythm]). It would be quite interesting to read about that if possible.

430 points by cabinguy 8y ago

Foobar8568 8y ago

One thing I wonder, if IQ would play something in this...

jshowa3 8y ago
In general, yes. A higher IQ is correlated with handling more complexity.
- astrodust 8y ago
  It's just one factor in the barrel of nonsense that standardized IQ tests are. Chimpanzees utterly destroy people in certain memory tests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkNV0rSndJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkNV0rSndJ0 That makes them exceptionally intelligent by that narrow metric. In others they're unable to keep up with some birds.
rcxdude 8y ago
Working memory is something which some IQ tests aim to evaluate.

vectorEQ 8y ago

if you do multiple things at once you divide your focus over these things, and thus retain less of each. seems reasonably logical??

Dylan16807 8y ago
It's not "while multitasking". It's a stable attribute.

jcims 8y ago

I think i've multitasked my way out of having sufficient functional memory to remember multiple simultaneous tasks.

sys_64738 8y ago

Multi-tasking it is not but task-switching it is with a heavy penalty for the context switch. In other words, the sum of the task-switching is much less than focus on a singular task.

zappo2938 8y ago

I reason I work in fields that require multitaskers is because I have very poor memory. The code I was given to work with is incredibly complicated. Few people can work with it. Not having good explicit memory forces me to organize my own work and detect patterns. I describe my ADHD not as being aware of one thing then another thing, but rather, being aware of all things at the same time. Do they compare memory before multitasking and then after multitasking?

Aloha 8y ago
You raise a good point - are people multitasking because they have poor memory, or do they have poor memory because they multitask?
- bflesch 8y ago
  That's exactly in line with what the researchers state: "It’s too early to definitively determine cause and effect."

Aloha 8y ago

So, I'm a frequent multitasker, but I generally arrange my tasks by likeness - so I'll do programming, then documentation, then design, then reading, and then perhaps troubleshooting. I guess it's a form of pipelining. The context switch penalty between like tasks is small, the context switch between dissimilar tasks is enormous and generally will cause me to completely lose state on whatever I was working on, which requires me to rethread the needle, and restart.

lordnacho 8y ago

Article says it's too early to draw conclusions. It could well be that your memory gets worse because you rely on technology to remember things for you. And because you know how to do that, you can switch between more tasks. There are stories about how people used to remember lots of things back when it wasn't so easy to store information. And also stories about tribal people who haven't yet developed literacy being able to remember lots of stuff.

polskibus 8y ago

Seems like most managers should fall into reduced memory category. They have to juggle more things during the day (on average) than specialists. A random email, meetings, etc. all contribute to this. I also wonder how smartphone usage worsens memory loss.

b1gtuna 8y ago

I try to avoid leaving a game or Youtube video open when I am "working". When I try to multitask, I get more frustrated. In the long run, the frustration turns into depression. So I try to tackle one task at a time nowadays. The difficult part is ignoring the phone. It is always within my view, if not within my arms reach. Just the sheer sight of my phone seems to take attention away from me. I don't know what to do with it though... I can't take it offline because my family needs to reach me. Perhaps a smartwatch would help?

brobdingnagians 8y ago
I totally relate to this; when I am multitasking I start getting irritable and frustrated. I do it a lot because I am trying to be ultra-productive, but I am starting to realize it would be better for my relationships and my work if I just take time to focus on one thing at a time; including the context that when I am not working, I don't think about working.
- b1gtuna 8y ago
  Thanks for bringing up the term ultra-productive. That's exactly why I began multitasking only to realize it is just far better to work on one thing at a time for the performance and for my happiness. It took me a long time to realize this, but I am glad I figured it out.
rifung 8y ago
Have you tried meditating? If I understand correctly it is supposed to train you to do exactly what you want: to be able to focus intently on one thing and not get distracted.
- b1gtuna 8y ago
  Funny you should mention meditation. It is something I am trying to incorporate into my life since early this year. Nothing fancy, I just use some guided meditation I find (usually 10 min long) and close my office door and listen to it. Unfortunately, I have yet to experience the full benefit of meditation since I only manage 2 sessions a week. However, when I it properly (ie, I don't get interrupted), I breathe better, my body is relaxed, and the head is clear.

cgriswald 8y ago

I used to have 'buckets' I would stick things into, and they would stay there forever. Context switching was not a problem. Whatever I had put in that bucket was so strongly associated with the context, that when I switched, the bucket would be there waiting for me. I think I basically had built something like a memory palace before I had the concept of a memory palace. Best way I think I can discribe it... it's almost like in my short term memory rather than trying to cram in every individual variable, I was just including a pointer to a struct containing the variables for those contexts. When I would call up that pointer, I'd get the entire struct and just keep going. I'm not sure if it's age, alcohol use, stress, always-on internet, genetics, or what, but now I'm lucky if I can remember what task I'm in the middle of if I start thinking about something else while doing it. I find myself just as able to solve problems when I can remember things, but a lot less able to remember things, making me feel a lot stupider and/or slower than I used to be. Context-switching is a real challenge now. FWIW, I used to be A LOT better at tuning out the world/distractions than I am now; I feel like that changed when my kid was born.

bytematic 8y ago
That is pretty close to how I think too. I also rarely commit things to memory which are easily referencable, which is annoying.
- a-dub 8y ago
  I like to joke that this is the reason why Google does their silly on-the-spot interviews where they expect people to recall algorithms from memory... They know that the machine they've built erases the need to memorize anything, that people are adapting to it and they want to make sure that if the day ever comes when their whole thing comes crashing down, there's a flying chance in hell that they'll have people on staff who can rebuild a search engine, without a working search engine, before society descends into Idiocracy.
0xFACEFEED 8y ago
I've been going through exactly the same issue since my kid was born (in my early 30s now). Reading your post was weird. I wonder if it's worth digging in to our situation more seriously. Is there a specialist we can talk to about this kind of stuff? Are there tests? The only conclusion I've come to is, putting it simply, we're dealing with: a) more things b) more complicated things. I had less to worry about when I was younger and the problems were comparatively simple. Now I'm getting paid a ton of money to work on very complex systems. This requires juggling more information that's way more complex. I dunno.

polskibus 8y ago

Shouldn't the title be updated to mention media multitasking?

kzrdude 8y ago

Have they controlled for sleep? This year I've made so many gains by sleeping well, that everything looks like a sleep problem to me.

taneq 8y ago

Heavy multitaskers have reduced... what now? What does 'memory' mean? In this case it's "simple memory tasks" but that's not what these people have optimised themselves for so it's unsurprising that they'd perform worse at it. "Leading triathletes do worse at 100m sprint" Oh no.

chki 8y ago
To me the connection between performing multitasking and therefore loosing your ability to memorize things is not at all obvious. And for it to be obvious (I think) one would probably need to know a lot more about the brain than we currently do. I mean: your example of a triathletes doing a sprint might be true (although a triathlete is probably still a lot better at that than an untrained individual). But there it is easy to see a connection (different muscle mass, different exercises to know what to do in a sprint). But why should there be a similar connectivity between different brain functions?
stinos 8y ago
Those simple memory tasks may very well be representative for whetever definition of memory you want to use - as long as that definition is close enough to the definition as found in dictionaries etc, and which is the general and established term for what is meant here. You make it sound like the gist of this article is obvious, in reality it's not, at least not for everyone. And even if it were you need research to actually prove it, that is how science works. Calling being able to switch tasks fast, and a lot, an otimization is in a lot of cases a bridge too far probably. It's only optimal if you actually need it. While there are enough jobs which rather benefit from detailed attentaion to just one thing, not multiple. And not all people knowingly train themselves to be able to multitask, rather they fall into it because of addictions etc.
commandlinefan 8y ago
I wonder if the cause and effect is backwards here - maybe people with poor memory multitask because they can’t concentrate.

jaxtellerSoA 8y ago

I would argue that humans can't multitask at all, period, full stop. At best we can rapidly switch what our brain is focused on.

jventura 8y ago
I can walk and talk at the same time, two tasks. Maybe we could say that humans can't do many cognitively hard tasks at the same time..

Eli_P 8y ago

Considering natural property of brain's neuroplasticity and adaptation, you can rewire and retrain your brain. The title is just saying: if you lift weights three times of yours, you can't go to marathon. There're approved exercises to train your operating memory set like N-Back[1] and others, and bunch of free apps, I liked the least boring of them[2]. But, all that does at least minimum sense if you can change your working routine. These apps can be thrown to trash if you are a fullstack developer with infinite backlog of projects. And I can't maintain hanging myself on these training apps because it makes me feel like a lab rat. Finally, I think the root of all that attention problems is boredom, anxiety and other social crap which never going to have been cured by any science. I wonder what results would be if somebody would try to find correlation on per country working time hours and playing online games. I wage that people who're supposed to focus on some boring work are either go find some freelance payload or kill some time playing games. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.owlie.braingame&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.owlie.brai...

anontechworker 8y ago
On the note of brain games, there have been studies on their effectiveness. You can read more from the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/07/10/brain-training-games-dont-really-train-brains-a-new-study-suggests https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/0...
dwaltrip 8y ago
From that wikipedia article, seems there is some uncertainty as to how effective n-back actually is at improving working memory in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back#Construct_validity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back#Construct_validity

andy_ppp 8y ago

I think I'll switch on noprocrast then... And maybe leave my mobile at home tomorrow!

Kaveren 8y ago

> "in heavy media multitaskers because they have a higher probability of experiencing lapses of attention. When demands are low, they underperform. But, when the task demands are high, such as when the working memory tasks are harder, there’s no difference between the heavy and light media multitaskers. I'm surprised no one brought this up. This seems to indicate that it's possible that multitasking only effects tasks that aren't very important or hard, and that they have no trouble concentrating on tasks which require involvement. Seems to be an argument here that heavy multitasking isn't nearly as bad as the rest of the article makes out?

matachuan 8y ago

Well my first thought on this is multitaskers have reduced their RAM size and I'm completely lost.

StanislavPetrov 8y ago

>but in reality our brains only allow us to do one thing at a time and we have to switch back and forth. Completely unsupported and untrue supposition. Many people regularly perform multiple complex tasks simultaneously.

Jenz 8y ago

Oops, I should be worried, but very shortly, I might have forgotten about this.

kintai_bridge 8y ago

I've always been good in Jeopardy. I suppose I'm a well of useless trivia. Well, the other night I tuned in to Jeopardy after years of not watching the show. (Literally years because I've been busy with my job and life.) I was surprised at how quick I was, as before, and didn't skip a beat. Somehow I can retrieve the same data after stagnant use in my brain. The reason I'm pointing this out is because I'm also a classic multi-tasker at my developer job and can relate to this article. The difficulty I have is not from a memory decline, but something else. The nature of work has changed. It's like the quest for higher profits--same with work.

notfed 8y ago
The article mentions that there are different types of memory, and that "working" memory, i.e. short-term, is the type that was found to be "reduced" by the study. Jeopardy trivia is almost certainly a different type of (long-term) memory.

gamesbrainiac 8y ago

What I have found very help is keeping a log of everything that I am doing on a single task. So ever 15 minutes or so, I just write done a small paragraph or even a sentence of what is going on for a particular task. I find that doing this really helps me get back on track if I am disturbed or have to focus on something else for a short while.

rednerrus 8y ago

Memory is about focus and observation. It shouldn't come as a surprise that people who are not focusing or observing are not going to remember very well. The same thing goes for the discovery yesterday that not being able to hear and see when you are older affects your memory.

systematical 8y ago

Not even a processor can multitask. Why would you think humans can. I love explaining that to people and destroying the computers can multitask myth.

usaphp 8y ago
From the article: > Well, we don’t multitask. We task switch. The word “multitasking” implies that you can do two or more things at once, but in reality our brains only allow us to do one thing at a time and we have to switch back and forth.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

Wouldn't neuro plasticity dictate that something is gained from the loss? That is, as the brain re-wires itself memory is shifted to the more immediate need. That is processing power.

Proven 8y ago

It's not reduced, it's self-adjusted to store less in order to not slow down multitasking.

known 8y ago

Women's brain is horizontally wired for multitasking. http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains-differ http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains...

agumonkey 8y ago

Is multitasking impossible ? Singer/player do multiple things on near parallel if not fully so.

agumonkey 8y ago
ps: to be serious, I even think that either use a very peculiar abstraction layer of the brain (juggling multiple inertial bodies while keeping some sort of coherent space-field [aka rhythm]). It would be quite interesting to read about that if possible.