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There's something fishy about the "multitasking [and long working hours] is bad" fad of the past 10 years. If I had to guess, it's that these studies aren't se
by georgewsinger 5y ago
There's something fishy about the "multitasking [and long working hours] is bad" fad of the past 10 years.
If I had to guess, it's that these studies aren't sensitive to the outliers. Imagine telling e.g. Elon Musk "multitasking and long hours are bad for your productivity".
I've been keeping very detailed data on my personal productivity for years, while taking all of the consensus wisdom ("long hours = bad", "multitasking = bad") to heart. What I've instead found is that long hours (literal 14+ hour days) makes me more consistently productive.
Multitasking also has a strong synergistic component to it that I suspect doesn't show up in these narrow studies.* If multitasking across different projects leads to insights that shave years off of your respective project plans, but otherwise makes you slower locally, it's still more than worth it. Again using Elon as an example: Tesla and SpaceX have been made mutually stronger by insights being cross applied the two enterprises.
* To be fair I'm speaking more of multitasking at the project level, not at the minute-to-minute level.
- welterde 5y agoCurious by which metric you are measuring productivity. Also wouldn't it make quite a difference on what time scale you are multi-tasking? If it's on the time scale of days between context switches or hours/minutes.
- filmfact 5y agoBut by focusing the on just one - SpaceX might be on Mars, and Tesla might have a real self-driving car. Unfortunately it’s difficult to test that hypothesis. And it’s survivor bias to pick Elon Musk.
- hungryforcodes 5y agoMultitasking and doing many things in a long shift are not synonymous if those things are not interrupted. The damage of multitasking is the interruption and the consequent context switch. Working 12-14 hours a day on a couple of things is more in line with deep work, which is actually very productive for alot of people.
- kqr 5y agoMaybe humans need a little bit of everything? Short working hours interspersed with a few longer days, focusing on some days, and intense multitasking and coordination on others? So if you're life currently involves only long days filled with multitasking (probably very common in some walks of life) the solution involves shorter days and more focused time, whereas for others it might be the other way around. Whatever the truth is, I highly doubt humans are optimised specifically for exactly eight (or six) hours of focused work every day. I suspect we are helped by some variation, including the occasional 14 hour multitasking day.