Multitasking is back in the news again, this time in the form of a study that says talking on a cell phone while driving, even using a handsfree device, slows down traffic and adds hours to your commute. The study itself isn’t all that convincing, but it resonates with other research we’ve covered in the past, as well as conventional wisdom going back decades. You can’t do software development for long, for example, without running up against the notion that context-switching is bad and kills productivity, as popularized in Peopleware.
Faced with this knowledge that multitasking makes us stupid, as well as less productive, much of the productivity industry is relentlessly focused on making sure that we only do one thing at a time, from the “next action” mantra of GTD to the screen-hijacking antics of minimalist word processors like WriteRoom and Dark Room. But what if the story isn’t quite that simple?
I don’t propose to argue that those of us who multitask incessantly are, in fact, more efficient than all those studies claim we are – though if you’ve ever watched a busy taxi dispatcher or bartender in action, you’ve seen a human juggling many tasks together over an extended period of time. Rather, I’d like to suggest something that’s almost heretical in some circles: productivity isn’t everything.
If you consider your entire working experience, maximum productivity is just one of the things you can optimize for – and this optimization comes at the expense of other values that you might wish to preserve. If you’re truly relentless about single-task focus, for example, then one thing that tends to suffer is your availability for human interactions, as you close your door, take the phone off the hook, shut down your email client, and set your instant messenger status to “Away” for much of the day. You may get more done, but at the cost of your friends feeling that you’re never around to chat with.
For those of us who work at home and enjoy the opportunity to have our kids as part of the home office, the cost can be even higher. Stay single-tasked and focused enough, and you might as well be off in a cubicle somewhere as at home; you’ll never even know when the little ones learn a new word or discover something exciting, because they’ll know they can’t interrupt daddy during working hours.
Then, too, interruptions can have a value all their own. Snacks can keep your blood sugar on an even keel. Microbreaks help prevent RSI. Following links to YouTube or watching the Twitter-stream go by helps keep those of us in the video game generation from feeling bored out of our skulls by work.
As with many other things, you need to find your own balance here. For me, at least, web work is not always about relentless productivity to the exclusion of all else. I proudly multitask because it makes my work days more enjoyable; indeed, one reason I’m a home-based web worker is that this environment gives me the freedom to multitask. How about you?
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