There is more to “multitasking” than meets the eye, no pun intended. This article is for those who think they can do more than one thing at a time effectively, and the more the better. Your brain doesn’t work that way. In fact by doing more than one thing at a time you are becoming over stimulated. This usually happens quickly and effectiveness becomes less with additional tasks.
Your perceptual feedback systems within your brain can focus on only one item or cycle at a time. One completed cycle consists of:
- An individuals decision for where to direct their attention (determined by an individuals intent and beliefs or pre-perceptions).
- The experience (an experience or action [thought being an action also]).
- The perceptual summary or post perception of the entire experience.
Essentially this is where perception creates an experience and then loops back onto itself. This is an ongoing feedback/feedforward system with the perception entering and leaving the experience. Once it has completed the cycle it continues, constantly changing the experience and perceptual summary, building up momentum and creating pathways. In order for this system to build up pathways and create a story it requires momentum to reach a threshold. This relies on focussed attention and to a great degree sensory information and emotion to prioritize it.
The perceptual feedback systems begin and end in a part of the brain called the Thalamus. The thalamus is also the focussing mechanism for attention. The feedback itself happens every instant and is continuous so that it appears seamless. What happens when you think you are multitasking is that feedback/forward system or (loop) is switching attention before the brain can do much with it, in terms of any momentum. It is in part the reason that when people multitask they can’t remember all of the story and may leave certain things out.
I will give you an example. Watching a movie, while on the laptop, while drinking coffee. Your brain will make a decision between those things in any instant, based on what is moving in your view, heard, felt, tasted, smelled or your need or intent in that instant. You will watch the movie and when you remember you were working on something your attention will shift back to the laptop as your coffee grows cold until you feel thirsty. By this time something on the TV screen may have caught your attention again. While you think you are doing these three things you will miss a part of the movie, what ever you are working on will likely need your attention again when you have your full attention to give it and you will have to at the least reheat your coffee. You may think it odd that I brought perception into something that mainly has to do with attention but they cannot be separated.
Using the same example lets look at the feedback/forward system again. It’s quick as I have said, seamless in its continuation. Emotion is quite tied to the experiences that make up your perceptional memory and it plays a large role as you will see. Of the three things that our example is doing, the movie is the likely item to get the most attention. If for any reason there will be more emotional thought associated with it, it is moving in his view, and making sound. How our example felt about that movie will transfer to his work and his coffee, because there was no time to determine the full perception tied to those other items. Another way of saying this is that if there is a love story in the movie where the lovers keep passing each other by, instead of meeting up, this may be frustrating to the viewer. This feeling of frustration would be transferred in some way to his work and his coffee both. There has been no time to determine a full perception of the other two. The more tasks you add to the mix the more it holds true.
Another example would be driving a car with your friend and your children as passengers. You are drinking coffee, talking with your friend and the children are in the back seat buckled in talking to each other. The ride seems smooth enough until you encounter some on and off traffic which now requires your focussed attention but you feel you should engage with your friend. You friend continues to talk and the children become louder to you even though nothing has changed. Because you realize you must focus on your driving your frustration with the situation of the traffic is passed onto the other items present. The longer you focus on the on and off again traffic the worse it will become for everyone in the car.
The fact is there is no such thing as doing more than one thing at a time. Your brain just doesn’t work that way. You are merely switching back and forth between items or experiences at the expense of the others in most cases. A feeling of scattered awareness, becoming overwhelmed, or breakdown is possible when there are too many items presented. This can also take place if emotional attachment to more than one item present.
Examples of being pushed or pulled to stimuli
If a child is watching TV or a movie at their sleep time, sleep is likely to lose out to the stimuli of the TV. If an adult is reading while another person is watching TV in another room the TV is likely to win out. If an adult is trying to work, while holding an infant, while drinking coffee and chatting on social media, then social media is likely to win out. If an adult is on social media while cooking and watching a movie, the cooking will lose and social media and the TV will compete. The winner between social media and the movie will be the one with more emotional attachment to the event or the one that makes the most noise. The more it affects your senses is where your attention usually goes. It takes great focus to do otherwise.
Even if you can focus through the sensual madness the other items will still take a backseat because then you are focussed on only one item and you are not multitasking any longer. It will stay that way until your senses pick up something else that grabs your attention. That is what focus is. Choose both your items and stimuli carefully and choose where to focus rather than being pushed or pulled toward it by your senses. Lastly, remember that focussing on more than one subject or item is not focussing.