• by Jeff Einstein , January 11, 2005

Once upon a time workers prided themselves on their ability to do a single job well, beginning to end. Nowadays, however, people are more likely to take pride in their ability to multitask, to perform several functions well at the same time. Multitasking is suddenly the minimum daily adult requirement. But does our performance under the multitasking banner comply with our expectations, and what's the price?

The Roman philosopher Publilius Syrus once said, "To do two things at once is to do neither." Clearly Publilius would have much to say about today's multitasking environment wherein the ability to perform only two tasks at once would rank him at the bottom of the multitasking hierarchy.

We multitask largely because we are now expected to do so. Nevertheless, many of us still believe in and crow about our ability to multitask effectively. But the truth -- at least according to psychologist and cognitive scientist David Meyer -- seems to conflict with our assumptions (many of which we make on the fly as part of our multitasking mix). According to Meyer -- who heads the University of Michigan's Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory -- we don't multitask very well at all. Apparently, our efforts to plug into or switch quickly back and forth between multiple projects conflict with our ability to get the job(s) done.

Gloria Mark, a University of California-Irvine professor, studied attention overload and multitasking among workers in a financial-services office. Her findings indicate that the average employee switches tasks every three minutes, is interrupted every two minutes, and has a maximum focus stretch of 12 minutes.

Potential long-term fallout from increased stress and anxiety aside, how can any of the above be good for business? "We're stressing people out with multitasking demands over time," says neuroscientist Jordan Grafman of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Maryland. "The brain gets confused and looks for default mechanisms. It becomes hard to focus; we take shortcuts."

For many, the default mechanism -- in what addiction expert Dr. Stanton Peele calls "The Great Age of Addiction" -- is obsessive compulsive behavior. Many tasks we switch back and forth between in today's workplace are now default obsessions and/or addictions. And like most obsessions and addictions, their original function is obscured over time, and they eventually function primarily as means to assuage our escalating anxieties, many of which are self-perpetuating and borne of a perceived need to multitask in the first place.

Economy is all about time, not money, and the real tragedy of addiction is in its tendency to displace time. Time dedicated to the pursuit of our obsessions and addictions is time diverted away from the quality of life and enhanced productivity. We can always make more money (hopefully), but we can never buy back our time. Once gone, it's gone forever.

The intense demands of multitasking all but eliminate our ability to commit the requisite time and intellectual capital to the big picture. The result is fragmentation of our attention and time on a massive scale, not unlike the fragmentation we see in today's media market. Fragmentation and our perceived need to shift our focus from one fragment to another every few minutes destroys our peripheral vision, and our peripheral vision is what provides context and balance in our lives. Addicts and other people with obsessive compulsive disorders lack the peripheral vision to keep their lives in balance. They remain focused instead on the demands of their addictions and obsessions, and use them as emotional anchors when they are compelled to shift back and forth between tasks.

Today's typical office is a breeding ground for obsessive compulsive behavior, thanks in large part to our obsession with multitasking as a legitimate objective. It's not. It's a misguided and highly compulsive effort to compete against the speed and reliability of our own technologies, an effort to restore mastery over something that now masters us. Your thoughts?

Many thanks, as always, and best to you and yours...

Please note: The Einstein's Corner discussion group at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/einsteinscorner/ is dedicated to exploring the adverse effects of our addictions to technology and media on the quality of our lives, both at work and at home. Please feel free to drop by and join the discussion.