Multi-tasking: Why it makes you a terrible human being (or not).

                I’m going to annoy a lot of people and avoid the whole topic of sex and multi-tasking, suffice to say everyone is capable of doing it to greater and lesser degrees and there is evidence to suggest that it’s influenced by your genetics (like almost everything in human behaviour).

                Our ability to do stuff is determined by what psychologist call your “cognitive load” essentially you only have a certain amount of cognitive function and you don’t want to blow your load all on one thing, you can split your attention between two or more tasks to varying degrees of success. The level of success depends on the familiarity you have with your tasks, for example people who type often can do so with very little cognitive load, as their unconscious mind and muscle memory handle a lot of the heavy lifting, leaving the conscious mind under less of a load.

                So what effect does a high cognitive load have? Well, most people become more irritable, easily distracted, and tend to make mistakes in what they are doing more often.  “Patting the head and rubbing the tummy” demonstrates the problem of relying on unconscious habits while at the same time employing the conscious mind to alter then. However for people who spend a lot of time around kids and do it a lot, they will have developed that “skill” to such a point where it’s unthinking, so they can pat their heads, rub their tummy’s and deliver a short presentation on the film career of Nick Cage at the same time while suffering very few side effects.

                Does it affect your ability to reason? Yes, it does. Being under a high cognitive load means you’re more dependent on your unconscious mind and long term memories for a lot of your executive level thinking. You’ll be quicker to jump to conclusions, more reliant on stereotypes and generally more inclined to take the “short route” cognitively speaking rather than stop and consider a problem or situation at length. You'll also be quicker to anger and frustration then you otherwise would be. Interestingly (but unrelatedly) this effect has been demonstrated to be compounded by hunger.

                As for productivity, it can arguably be very productive, especially if it’s tasks that the individual is very familiar with, people who do long repetitive jobs may often switch between them with very little obvious signs of fatigue or increase in cognitive load, simply because most of the tasks are done without serious conscious thought. That explains that “I am dead inside” look you often get form people in the public service industry, they’re on autopilot, seemingly doing a complex multitude of tasks without engaging more brainpower then it takes to consider what sandwich they will have after work. The flipside to this is when people accept too much of a cognitive load, which I have referred to earlier, the results being VERY unproductive.

                So essentially? Multi-tasking, and its effects are very much dependant on what you’re doing as to the effects it will have on you. It’s not a “skill” in the sense you can develop it, rather it’s an ability you can employ to varying degrees of success based on your level of ability with the tasks at hand.