I read an article in Time recently about multitasking. Most specifically about how much teens are multitasking today, aided by all the electronic devices that keep them connected, 24/7. The gist of the article was that even though people think they're being more efficient and effective when they are multitasking, in fact they are not. "Decades of research (not to mention common sense) indicate that the quality of one's output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks." "Although many aspects of the networked life remain scientifically uncharted, there's substantial literature on how the brain handles multitasking. And basically, it doesn't." "You're doing more than one thing, but you're ordering them and deciding which one to do at any one time." Hm, it's all kind of scary...
Which brings me to the idea that this is what we've had to do all along. Go through life, be in a meeting, have a conversation AND evaluate where we are in terms of our blood sugar...am I high? am I low?, "oh yes, please pass the salad", smile, take a blood test, oops, I'm a bit low, "oh no, the budget is fine on that project", hm, do I have sugar with me, damn no, I left it in my purse back in the office, "please fill it with supreme", where is that sugar? And we're doing all that on top of the normal multitasking that is so much a part of modern life today. Pump, blackberry, blood test machine, cellphone, pager. Wow. I feel so modern. And distracted.
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