Multi-tasking is not that easy

And do you know what that means?  All you people who say you can multi-task are either lying or are fooling  yourselves.  Yes, most of you out there can probably do more than one thing at a time, but I bet that you cannot do more than one thing at a time well.  Why do I say that?  Because I can’t do it, I’ve seen quite a few people who can’t do it and so I have to make the assumption that most people can’t do it!!

Do you know how often I’ve tried to watch tv and talk on the phone at once?  I almost always have to pay more attention to one than the other or else I can’t really listen to either.  Or played video games and someone calls?  It can’t be done.  Inevitably, the person on the phone will say something like “Did you hear what I said?” or “Are you listening to me?”  I used to try to watch tv and do my homework at the same time.  You just can’t do well.  For some reason, the homework always took me so much longer.  It got to the point that I only started doing  homework and watching tv at the same time if I was doing brainless, repetitive homework that didn’t require a lot of thinking.

Now, when I am at work, I often multi-task.  But, its not the same thing.  If I have 2 queries to write or 2 reports to create, I don’t actually do both at the same time.  I will, for example, write one part of a query, run it, and then while it is running I will write the other query.  If you define multi-tasking like that, as someone who can efficiently manage time, then yes, I can do that quite easily.  That is why at work you are often given more than one assignment at a time.  Its defined as time management in that case, not actually doing more than one thing at at time.

Are there some people who are able to actually do more than one thing at a time and do them both as well as if they were doing them separately?  Probably.  But I’d bet a lot of money that was more the exception, and there are not a lot of people who can actually do it.  No, I’m not talking about chewing gum and walking at the same time.  I think that for this very reason you see all those studies of traffic accidents being much more likely when people are talking on the phone or texting at the same time as they drive.  People can do both yes.  But, there is no way that you can do both equally well…but rather both equally bad.  So, the next time you tell yourself that you are a master multi-tasker, ask yourself why the person on the phone just asked you “Are you listening to me?” or why your homework took you so long to do or why all the studies show that people who talk on the phone are more likely to get into an accident than those who do not.  Maybe you really aren’t as good  as you thought, you really are like everybody else and are not the exception.