Category: Invaluable

Quote: But why, exactly, does multitasking have such a negative effect? According to Dave Crenshaw, business coach and author of The Myth of Multitasking, the damage is caused by what he calls the “switching cost” – the time taken to switch from one task and refocus on another. “You actually take much longer to accomplish … Continue reading “If you only do one thing this week… avoid multitasking | Money | guardian.co.uk”

“In an ideal Buck Rogers world, we would be able to text and drive at the same time without worry. Using driver workload management software, an intelligent car would instantly recognize when we are using our personal digital assistant, and perhaps activate a magnetic field around the vehicle repelling us from danger or collision…” http://www.detnews.com/article/20090910/OPINION03/909100337/1031/opinion03

“A new study suggests that people who often do multiple tasks in a variety of media — texting, instant messaging, online video watching, word processing, Web surfing, and more — do worse on tests in which they need to switch attention from one task to another than people who rarely multitask in this way…” http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/25/multitasking.harmful/index.html

Dr Tom Stafford, a lecturer at the University of Sheffield and co-author of the book Mind Hacks, believes that the same fundamental learning mechanisms that drive gambling addicts are also at work in email users. “Both slot machines and email follow something called a ‘variable interval reinforcement schedule’… This means that rather than reward an … Continue reading “Email is as addictive as a slot machine | Technology | The Guardian”