Multitasking: Not Recommended

Researchers at the Federal Aviation Administration and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor found that while doing multiple tasks at once may appear to be more efficient it actually is more time consuming and in some cases poses health risks.

Four groups of young adults participated in four experiments. They were all asked to carry out a series of tasks and switch between different tasks, some complicated, such as solving a math problem, and others easier and more familiar, such as identifying a geometric shape. A
participant's performance speed was measured as the tasks were carried out.

The findings: human capacity for multitasking decidely has its limits. Participants lost time in performance speed when switching tasks and they lost more time as the task became more complex.

Twelve Years of Inundation

"The average Fortune 1000 worker already is sending and receiving approximately 178 messages and documents each day, according to a study, "Managing Corporate Communications in the Information Age." (Boles, 1997 “Help! Information overload.” Workforce Magazine)

Making Big Decisions Easier

'Sleeping on it' best for complex decisions
February 16, 2006 New Scientist (vol 311, p 1005)

“Complex decisions are best left to your unconscious mind to work out, according to a new study, and over-thinking a problem could lead to expensive mistakes. The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove. Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result with which people remain happy than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem.”

“Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only consider a subset of information, which they weight inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice. In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with.”

Ap Dijksterhuis at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands says “We found that when the choice was for something simple, such as purchasing oven gloves or shampoo, people made better decisions – ones that they remained happy with – if they consciously deliberated over the information.”

“But once the decision was more complex such as for a house, too much thinking about it led people to make the wrong choice. Whereas, if their conscious mind was fully occupied on solving puzzles, their unconscious could freely consider all the information and they reached better decisions.”

Expectation counts
The unconscious mind appears to need some instruction. “It was only when people were told before the puzzles that they would need to reach a decision that they were able to come up with the right one.” If they were told that none of what they had been shown was important before being given the puzzles, they failed to make satisfactory choices.

“At some point in our evolution, we started to make decisions consciously, and we’re not very good at it. We should learn to let our unconscious handle the complicated things,” Dijksterhuis says.

Interruptions Lower IQs

From an article in New Scientist magazine, April, 30 2005:

The next time your boss complains you are not focused enough, blame it on email and phone calls. Even smoking dope has less effect on your ability to concentrate on the task in hand.

At least that's what Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist King's College London, found when he and his team asked 80 volunteers to carry out problem-solving tasks, first in a quiet environment and then while being bombarded with emails and phone calls.

Despite being told to ignore the interruptions, the average IQ of the volunteers dropped by about 10 points. Not everyone was equally affected - men were twice as distracted as women. Studies have also shown that IQs of people high on pot drop by only 5 points.

"If left unchecked, 'infomania' will damage a worker's performance by reducing their mental sharpness," says Wilson. "This is a very real and widespread phenomenon." Information overload can reduce a person's ability to focus as much as losing a night's sleep can, he adds.

Choices and Misery

"Logic suggests that having options allows people to select precisely what
makes them happiest. But, as studies show, abundant choice often makes for
misery."
Barry Schwartz, "The Tyranny of Choice," Scientific American, April 2004

Dying for Information

This is a scary one: Having too much information can be as dangerous as having too little. In his report Dying for Information, commissioned by Reuters Business Information, based in London, David Lewis, Ph.D. observes that too much information can lead to a paralysis of analysis, making it harder to find the right solutions or make decisions.

Multitasking and Your Brain

“There’s substantial literature on how the brain handles multitasking. And basically, it doesn’t … what’s really going on is a rapid toggling among tasks rather than simultaneous processing,” concludes Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

What Info they ARE taking in?

Makes you wonder what information they are taking in:

American's Understanding of Science: From the National Science Foundation's biennial report issued on April 30, 2002 on the state of science understanding, research, and education, of 1,574 adults surveyed:

* 60% agreed or strongly agreed that some people possess psychic powers or extrasensory perception, a premise yet unproven.

* 30% believe that some reported objects are vehicles from other civilizations.

* 43% read the astrology charts at least occasionally in the newspaper.

Also:

* 54% knew long it takes the Earth to orbit the sun. (One year.)

* 45% knew that lasers work by focusing light.

* 51% knew that antibiotics kill bacteria but not viruses.

* 48% knew that the earliest humans didn't live at the same time as the dinosaurs.

E-mails 'hurt IQ more than pot'

“Workers distracted by phone calls, e-mails and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than a person smoking marijuana, a British study shows. The constant interruptions reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic, according to a survey carried out by TNS Research and xommissioned by Hewlett Packard.” The survey of 1,100 Britons showed:

* Almost two out three people check their electronic messages out of office hours and when on holiday
* Half of all workers respond to an e-mail within 60 minutes of receiving one
* One in five will break off from a business or social engagement to respond to a message.
* Nine out of 10 people thought colleagues who answered messages during face-to-face meetings were rude, while three out of 10 believed it was not only acceptable, but a sign of diligence and efficiency.

“The mental impact of trying to balance a steady inflow of messages with getting on with normal work took its toll, the UK's Press Association reported. In 80 clinical trials, Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King's College London University, monitored the IQ of workers throughout the day. He found the IQ of those who tried to juggle messages and work fell by 10 points -- the equivalent to missing a whole night's sleep and more than double the 4-point fall seen after smoking marijuana.”

How Much New Info Annually?

“How much new information is created each year?” Researchers at Berkeley University say that “Newly created information is stored in four physical media: print, film, magnetic and optical, and seen or heard in four information flows through electronic channels, telephone, radio and TV, and the Internet.” The executive summary is provided at http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/execsum.htm

Language and Economy

According to the New York Times, only about half of China's population can speak its national language, which is Mandarin. China’s 55 ethnic minorities, and the majority Han population, converse in a total of 1,599 dialects, most of them incomprehensible to Mandarin speakers.

With the bewildering array of information that cannot easily be conveyed, it might be a while before China’s economy becomes all it could be.

Cell Phones and Family Tension

Study: Cell phones tied to family tension

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- The round-the-clock availability that cell phones and pagers have brought to people's lives may be taking a toll on family life, a new study suggests.

The study, which followed more than 1,300 adults over 2 years, found that those who consistently used a mobile phone or pager throughout the study period were more likely to report negative "spillover" between work and home life -- and, in turn, less satisfaction with their family life.

Spillover essentially means that the line between work and home begins to blur. Work life may invade home life -- when a parent is taking job-related calls at home, for instance -- or household issues may start to take up work time.

In the latter scenario, a child may call mom at work, not to say that he aced his English test but that the "microwave exploded," explained Noelle Chesley, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the author of the study.

The problem with cell phones and pagers seems to be that they are allowing for ever more spillover between work and home, according to Chesley's findings, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. This may be especially true for working women, the study found.

Among men, consistent use of mobile phones and pagers seemed to allow more work issues to creep into family time. But for women, the spillover tended to go in both directions -- being "connected" meant that work cut into home time, and family issues seeped into work life. And people who reported more negative spillover -- spillover of the exploding-microwave variety -- tended to be less satisfied with their family life.

The point, Chesley told Reuters, is that cell phones and pagers seem to be opening more lines for stressful exchanges among family members, rather than positive ones….

Discourteous Cell User? Not Me!

The Sprint Wireless Courtesy Report for 2004, which is a nationwide survey of wireless etiquette, revealed that an overwhelming majority of American adults find that people are less courteous today when using a wireless phone. Yet, no one regards himself as discourteous.