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I'm a Single Track guy

Do you believe you are more productive because you think you can multitask?  Studies show you are wrong.  Why do we believe we can; why do we think we are super-special and have powers above the average?  Answer: (pay attention) cognitive bias - attentional bias.


Media multitaskers pay mental price, Stanford study shows

People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time, a group of Stanford researchers has found."





I think I will lower my personal kanban work-in-process limit to ONE.  There really is only one (Highlander - then there was the sequel).

Just last week, coaching a new team with their Scrum task board we had a conversation on the number of tasks a person could be working on at one time.  The reason given for the four tasks in process on the big visible scrum task board was that getting up from their desk to select the next task sticky was a nuisance.  The tasks were estimated at 1 - 3 hours each, and two tasks were still in process the next day.  Changing peoples perceptions of efficiency is a slow process of exposing incorrect mental models that are reinforced by cognitive bias.

Hello, wake up people, do not try to be a computer.  That day will come, as we approach the Singularity, when humans transcend biology.
In Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity Is Near, he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our own creations.

That merging is the essence of the Singularity, an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity. In this new world, there will be no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality. We will be able to assume different bodies and take on a range of personae at will. In practical terms, human aging and illness will be reversed; pollution will be stopped; world hunger and poverty will be solved. Nanotechnology will make it possible to create virtually any physical product using inexpensive information processes and will ultimately turn even death into a soluble problem.

Stanford study: Stanford Study on Multi-Tasking


Comments

Anonymous said…
David,

I couldn't agree more. I wrote a post on the same subject myself: Task-Switching is for Computers, not Humans @http://www.softwareresults.us/2009/11/task-switching-is-for-computers-not.html
Martin W said…
Another great take on this topic is http://www.infoq.com/articles/multitasking-problems
David said…
Here's a Dilbert comic strip that reflects my view on [squirrel... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaAxzIFgNso] multitasking.

http://dilbert.com/strips/2011-06-05/