March 8, 2007

• Stop Interrupting Yourself

  I noticed that I had a hard time getting my students to focus on a task this past school year.  I could get their partial attention, but not their full attention.  I found myself having to give instructions for activities several times in two languages because the students had not listened the first two times.  Many of them chattered constantly and seemed unaware that their mouths had been moving when asked to be quiet.  It was as if they thought that I was a TV that it was all right to talk over and comment upon. 

  I wonder if the following could have anything to do with it.  There are just too many things to do nowadays!  I remember that I was not allowed to have a radio on when I did my homework on paper.  I still cannot really concentrate when music is playing, because my mind follows the music.  Silence is actually quite pleasant.  I really don't care anymore about who is in the "top ten," what Hollywood is doing, or what is on TV in English or Japanese.  It just is not important or relevant to my life.  It could also be my chronology, which is now better able to evaluate relevancy.

  I wonder if information overload could have something to do with my aversion to Japanese department store basements.  They sell all sorts of delicious foodstuffs and delicacies down there, but there are so many counters to choose from, and all of the vendors are bleating and baying out greetings and sales pitches at the top of their lungs to the hoards of customers who are so paralyzed by the noise that they just stand there in confusion and block traffic.  Jus' hate it and won't go unless I absolutely must.

  Thanks for calling my attention to this, Bruce.

  Condensed from KATE N. GROSSMAN

  In the 1990's a Microsoft executive noticed something when she watched students working on laptops where she was teaching a class. Tiled across their screens were four or five applications: email, a Word document, music, a news service. These kids were paying attention to everything, all at once.  She gave it a name: continuous partial attention.

  We feel overwhelmed, overstimulated and unfulfilled, and we're under constant stress because we don't want to miss anything.  Multimedia has given us unimaginable access and freedom. But continue at your own risk, because you'll undermine your ability to learn, think deeply and remember.  The brain is a limited organ. It can't take in, analyze, organize and decide what matters from overwhelming amounts of information. When we think we're multitasking, we're really just constantly interrupting ourselves.

  The brain can only handle one task at a time.  Fallout from multitasking includes mistakes, reduced speed and surface-level thinking.  We don't learn as effectively when multitasking. We don't retain information as well, and it's harder to retrieve.  Every time you switch tasks, the brain needs time to stop and then restart.  And if you continue multitasking, you'll not only make more errors and feel befuddled. You could change the very way your brain works, reducing its capacity to do the heavy lifting: reasoning and deliberating.  Multitasking is really just the physical act of switching and relies on brain systems related to visual and motor processing. Reasoning and deliberation take place elsewhere, in the prefrontal cortex.

  So what could happen if we keep up a steady diet of switching?  We'll likely change the proportion of space devoted to doing that vs. deliberation.  Once the brain starts to recommit, it's much harder to bring back those brain areas to do deliberative thinking. Children are most at risk because their brains are still developing.

  Research in 2006 shows what multitasking does to our brains. Multitaskers store information they've learned in a different part of the brain than people who learn without distraction, and the two brain systems aren't equal. The multitaskers stored their information in an area that's "less flexible," meaning it's harder to retrieve later. That section controls habit or automatic behavior, such as riding a bike. But when you learn without distraction, the brain's conscious learning system is engaged. That's for storing facts and concepts - information you can recall in a variety of situations. People who multitasked had a harder time remembering what they'd learned than people who worked without distraction.

  We're adapting to a world where the phrase "information overload" no longer even applies. Instead, we're confronted with "information pollution."  We exist in an Age of Interruption. Sixty-one percent of middle and high schoolers multitask some or most of the time while doing homework.  While kids are learning math, they're also instant messaging, talking on the phone or watching TV.  Between 1999 and 2004, the amount of time eight- to 18-year-olds spent media multitasking jumped from 16 to 24 percent of their total media time.  Kids are spending more time with "new media," like computers and video games, but they're not cutting back on "old media," like TV, print and music.

  Adults are also affected.  Research checking how often workers at an investment management company switched from one project to another showed ten and a half minutes. They averaged no more than two minutes with any document or device, such as a computer or cell phone, before moving on or getting sidetracked.  This has an impact on the amount of depth people can apply to their work.  Interruption can refresh people, it can bring on a new perspective, but overall, it's a negative because of the time and mental effort that it takes to reorient to what you're doing.

  So what's to blame for all this multitasking craziness?  The daily deluge of information and the desire to scan for something better.  It's now easy to find out anything anyone has ever said about anything. But that's completely useless and also stressful.  The more noise you have, the more spam you get, the more overloaded you feel because it's harder to tell what's important.

  Technology itself, it turns out, also is to blame.  When you yearn for the simplicity of paper and pen, don't knock yourself for being a fuddy-duddy. Computer reading and writing simply can't match the experience on paper at a comfortable desk, several experts say.  We read more slowly on screen than on paper because resolution on most computer screens is significantly lower than on paper, and the typical small size of a computer screen only makes us feel more overloaded. With an airline table, you start putting documents away or under other documents, then quickly you spend time shuffling them around rather than working on them.  The equivalent thing happens on a computer.  People get lost more easily on the screen than on paper.  The data smog we live in means people are always finding it hard to remember where they saw something or to relocate information.  On paper, information is anchored in three dimensions, making reading linear and straightforward. Online, there is no clear path. You scroll between pages without knowing an end point and jump from page to page hunting for information.

  People are increasingly looking for ways to lower the noise and striving for small levels of sanctuary; however, as the technology gets better,  there is an increased likelihood that continuous partial attention is a permanent condition of post-industrial life.

  • 04:20
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