AB: So what happens when we’re multitasking, how do we do those two things at once?
DB: Well, the first thing I should say is that we’re really bad at multitasking. It’s not something we do well. By multitasking I mean any time we’re trying to do multiple things at the same time.
So to say ‘how do we do it?’ is sort of to say ‘how do we do poorly at it?’ to some extent. But when we’re trying to do multiple things at once, we’re trying to orchestrate more than one action through the same system. And because of the way we think about our actions, the way we are able to assemble our actions, relies sometimes on the same components it causes interference.
So, just as an example, if I tried to say two words at the same time, like literally just at the same time, I couldn’t say two words at once. My mouth can’t do that. And so that’s a common resource, my mouth. In the task of saying those words. And I can only do one of those words at a time. So, I have to do one and then I do the other, if I’m trying to multitask at that level.
But obviously there’s a lot of similar resources like that, happening before you get to my mouth. So in my brain, there’s lots and lots of common or overlapping resources that your brain is using. And when two tasks draw in the same one, you’re going to have a bottleneck, interference, and it makes it hard to do it. So that’s the problem of multitasking.
So in terms of coming back to this question about cues and things in the world. Often when we do tasks, we associate things in the world with those tasks, and those also kind of elicit – even if we’re trying not to do a task right now, I’m trying to work on, say, writing something but I have my smartphone nearby and it buzzes or I see it even – it’s going to elicit another task, like checking social media or doing something else.
So either I’m going to be compelled by that and go and do it, which would distract me from what I’m doing, or I’m going to have to go through some mental work to keep that at bay. But nonetheless, it’s going to cause some interference and that’s going to disrupt what I what I’m doing right now.
Multitasking is something that’s not even just about trying to do multiple tasks at the same time, it’s about putting yourself in an environment where you have cues to multiple tasks that will cause that competition and interference.
Anybody who’s been a parent with children at home during this pandemic knows that it is very hard to be productive when you’re multitasking and you have strong, attentionally demanding cues to other tasks in your world. It’s hard to be productive.