@magus

Many people can not pay attention to many things at onc. I have no doubt **some** people you see on their phone wont recall what you are saying. Others on the other hand have better mental faculties and can do one thing on their phone while completely paying attention to everything you say.

I find it absolutely infuriating and silly when someone assumes **everyone** is incapable of effectively multitasking without reduced attention. I have absolutely no problem doing multiple things at once with no impact on my retention, why should I be penalizaed for someone elses poor mental skills.

These people may be distracted, they may not. I personally dont know anything about their mental abilities. Assuming we hired smart people (a big if I know) for our politicians then they should be more than capable to review their phone and follow along at the same time.

Also not ewe have no clue what they are doing on their phone, they may very well be looking up information relative to the conversation (like the definition of a word or pulling up a world map).

@unimagine

@magus

I will take my proven track record over some generic chinese symbol any day. I've had my multitasking abilities challenge before with this sort of archaic thinking (and an attempt to control others to a sense of confirmity)... every single time when someone goes "ok what did I just say then?" I recite it back perfectly.

Yea sorry not going to assume everyone is the same and has the same ability and then judge people by those standards... thats just silly

@unimagine

@magus

AS a scholar and scientist where learning is a part of every day life I think im just fine thanks. Literally when i do less multitasking my work gets WORSE. I know how my brain works and have more than enough of a track record to show I know whats best for my own retention.

But hey, keep telling everyone their brains operate the same and force them all to learn and listen in exactly the same ways, im sure that will be WAYYYY better, lol

@unimagine

@freemo @magus @unimagine

Literally when i do less multitasking my work gets WORSE.​

Yikes. You’ve actually trained yourself to work suboptimally. Imagine how well you could work if you hadn’t screwed yourself out of the ability to focus on one thing.

So sad. So much wasted potential.

@danjones000

No quote the opposite, I have trained myself to focus on multiple things without needing to take away from each other.

@magus @unimagine

@freemo @magus

I’m sure you think that’s so.

@danjones000

Dont project on me your insecurities about being unable to multitask effectively.

@magus

@freemo @magus

Don’t project on me your insecurities about being unable to focus on one thing at a time.

I can never tell if my antenna has an issue, or if ban conditions just kick out on me. All day FT8 was ringing off the hook. Then around 11pm all the weak signals die on me and I only get the strong ones. It is late enough in the night i would expect propagation might end (way past gray line propagation). The other give away is that I noticed around the same time I somehow detuned. Even though my antennas natural SWR was only 3 I suspect something shifted to make it detune.

Anyway tomorrow I think ill have to analyze the antenna proper and see how it looks. I may need a new antenna if this keeps up.

@freemo @magus @unimagine i don't think regular employees would get away with being on their phones during meetings all the time...

And even if succeeded in arguing they can multitask, the chance they're actually tested for their knowledge seems much higher. And they won't get away with "i don't remember".(unlike the Dutch PM)

@jasper

I think depends a lot on the company. As I mentioned I was at one company in particular where my habbit of typing on my laptop was common during meetings and people commented it was unacceptable (which I thought was quite idiotic). But that is the only time I had that reaction and it was a mega-corp.

Every other company I had been at, many of which were startups, no one ever commented at it. This may be simply because I was at the top of the food chain, so as the "boss" people felt i proved my abilities enough (or were just unwilling to confront me)... I still usually had someone above me, mind you, who could have said something.

So yea in my expiernce whether it is "acceptable" or not seems to depend simply on how stiff of a rod the management has up their ass combined with how highly ranked your position is that might suggest you can self-govern.

@magus @unimagine

@beanface42

For starters, an opinion piece is not science. Second, any claim that we cant do multitasking would have to find the best multitasking performers out of a large group then compare the performance over long periods when not multitasking. Something I havent really seen any studies do, so there is no science that shows **everyone** cant multitask.

What general studies I have seen shown, at least among intelligent groups (like doctors) that moderate levels of multitasking produces the greatest output. That is, focusing on just one thing, or focusing on too many is detrimental, that the ideal overall performance is achieved by some moderate middle ground when it comes to multitasking. For example shown in this study:

https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/msom.2013.0464

It is also shown that multi-tasking is a learned skill (so only certain people in a population can do it) and that the skill is closely related to the activity of ones prefrontal cortex:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627309004589

@unimagine

@freemo thanks for the links! Seems a tough read but I will take the time !

Personally, I found that segmentation of work, like suggested by the Pomodoro technique more efficient! I must be wired for that 😬

@beanface42 There is no doubt different people work best at varying levels of multitasking. But even the pomodoro method is multitasking at a high granularity (the context switching is less often). So there is still some degree of multitasking that cant be avoided.. its just a sliding scale of how much.

I think it has a lot to do with your ability to context switch and boredom. Context switching should be frequent enough that boredom of doing a single task doesnt overwhelm you, but not so often you become ineffective.

@icedquinn @freemo true, and your are holding one of the main culprits in your hand 😅…and me too!

@beanface42

This professor of Cognitive Psychology is obviously just projecting his insecurities on others. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. 🙄

@freemo

@danjones000

I dunno, I'd say the multiple authors and peer review professors of psychology that proved him wrong experimentally knew more about what they were talking about than the one phd that wrote an opinion piece to the contrary.

@beanface42

@freemo

Here’s the real issue. You (and these psychologists) are talking about two different things, and calling them both multi-tasking.

True multi-tasking is doing two things at the same time. People don’t really do that. Not efficiently.

The studies you linked aren’t talking about that. What they’re actually talking about is efficient task switching. This is the thing that you’re talking about that can be learned.

The problem with this is that the original point in all of this conversation isn’t about efficient task-switching, it’s about true multi-tasking, in this case, doing something on your phone, while also listening to a speaker.

You talk about these two things as if they are one, but they aren’t.

@beanface42

@danjones000 Put your money where your mouth is.. I will bet you I can get on webcam with you, type out the fibonaci sequence as you talk, and when im done I can recite anything you said... Willing to bet you 100$ in cryptocurrency I wont even flinch.

@freemo

If you’ve memorized the Fibonacci sequence, that’s meaningless. You’d just be working on muscle memory. I do that all the time.

I think about something that I’m about to type. Then, I start typing. Someone can come into the office and talk to me, but I’ll continue typing, and talk to the person at the same time, because I’ve already done the focus I need to to decide what to type. My fingers are just working on their own at that point.

I can do that because of the many many years of experience I have with a computer keyboard. As long as I’ve already done the mental work beforehand, the physical work is nothing.

That’s not true multi-tasking, because it doesn’t actually require paying attention to two things at once, unlike the original topic at hand.

@danjones000 then we do the fibonaci sequence but you get to pick the starting 2 seed numbers. That way you know I didnt memorize it.

@fluff

Its not just that. Multitasking, if you learn to do it right, greatly improves your output, and its kinda obvious why. Any one task is going to have micro-blockers. For example if your programming then you have periods where you wait for it to compile or a big download, in a lecture there may be periods of the talk that you already understand, etc.

So by shifting your focus during the micro-blockers to secondary tasks you dont waste idle time focusing on just one thing just for the sake of it. Moreover, and this is the important part, your subconscious is busy thinking about and working on everything at once. So when you shift back to a task you will almost always find you have a greater understanding than where you left off and the all of a sudden you can see connections and answers you were struggling with before.

@unimagine

@fluff @unimagine @freemo Medication can help.