Monotask

 

At a presentation on the learning styles of "Generation Z" today we were told to let our students know that multitasking is a myth. Nobody can do several things at once well; the mind just does one thing, then the other thing, neither of then thoughtfully or well. People generally switch tasks every three minutes but it takes twenty-three minutes to get back in the groove. And meanwhile, since so much energy goes to catching up, it tires the brain out: you know how your iPhone battery runs out faster when you have many open applications? We were encouraged to make our students aware of all this, let them learn how better to learn.

Of course we might need to learn some of these lessons too. As an experiment, the presentation leader said, why doesn't everyone here take out their cellphones (everyone had one, though one professor protested he usually doesn't, being a luddite) and turn them off (some of us looked confounded - you can do that? - but I think we all did). I did. How does that feel, she asked? I knew how it was supposed to feel - free, off-line! But as the presentation went on I realized it didn't really feel turned off so much as about to be on again; I knew it would be on again in forty, thirty, twenty-five minutes, unless I decided to turn it on sooner, which I wasn't going to do, heroically resisting the temptation...

When she said that the worst part of multitasking, what makes it so wearying, is the constant decisions involved - whether and when to switch from one thing to another - I realized that was what it actually felt like. Deciding whether and when to decide to turn it back on.

Nearly constantly.

Can I call that a wake-up call?