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If Multitasking Is Impossible, Why Are Some People So Good at It?
- boon 15y agoI think some people are just good at switching.
- sp332 15y agoMaybe they can abstract multiple things into a single cognitive context, and then they don't have to switch.
- williamcotton 15y agoThis definitely applies to doing things like playing the drums, singing and playing the guitar at the same time, or a number of other musical activities.
- waxymonkeyfrog 15y agoBut that's exactly it. It's not how well you can pay attention to A and B at the same time. It's about how fast your brain goes A to B and back to A without losing acuteness.
- jwingy 15y agoReminds me of node.js: single-threaded but very fast at switching to do different things.
- bigtech 15y agoI suspect there are some tasks that require a lot of focus, so switching tasks is intrinsically costly. While other tasks allow someone to return a prior state very quickly.
- ars 15y agoThe task switch vs multitask is a red herring given that computers also task switch, rather than multitask. Multi core doesn't count since that's essentially two computers. And multiple ALUs in a CPU also don't count given that the brain has trillions of "logic units". And in any case people multi task constantly - I can walk, talk, breath, enjoy scenery, look for obstacles, maintain cardiovascular pressure, digest food, maintain proper eye focus, and a really impressive number of other things (that are all brain controlled - not independent) in a true simultaneous fashion. And if you mean multi task higher level thought - people do that too. How many times do you suddenly find the solution to a problem you are working on while doing something else entirely? The only thing we don't multi task is attention. And that's by definition not by reality. Something that can multi task attention is considered to be two somethings rather than a multitasker.
- tsunamifury 15y agoI've always assumed the real problem is swap time between non-repetitive tasks.
- Bjartr 15y agoHooray for semantic arguments that miss the point.
- wslh 15y agoIf you focus on multitasking then it's a single task.
- mannicken 15y agoOur brain is capable of creating several personalities that argue with each other (see split identity disorder). Of course it can handle multi-tasking.