The Joys and Pains of Multitasking

I can barely remember the days when life was not all about multitasking. When one did things one at a time, and if you wanted to do a lot of things, then it was a matter of doing things faster, more efficiently or simply finding the time in which to do them.

The only form of multitasking I can think of in the good old days — that is, when time seemed to move a lot slower and there were certainly a lot less gadgets in my hand, on my lap and in my handbag — was reading a book while eating my packet of potato chips and sipping my cup of tea, or watching the television while vacuuming at the same time.

Nowadays, of course, if you don’t multitask you can barely get anything done. At least that’s how it feels. It is as if time is such a precious luxury that to fill it with only one activity literally seems like a, well, waste of time.

To give a concrete example, while writing this article I was also updating my status on Twitter, checking what my friends were up to on Facebook or via online chatting, listening to music and watching television, plus surfing the Internet to read online newspapers and magazines for the latest stories. And of course there is that important cup of tea.

Granted, all of these activities might not necessarily come under the heading of “task” but more of leisure, pleasure or even addiction, but I imagine no one these days really sits down in an armchair for hours on end doing nothing else but reading a book or listening to a whole symphony. At least I don’t. Not anymore. (I’d like to, really. But first of all I need to update my status: reading a book by such and such. Highly recommended. And then keep an eye on my mobile device for responses.)

After all, we now live in a world of the short attention span, the 15-second message, the one-minute video clip, the 140-character essay, all topped off with the patience of the White Rabbit forever running late.

Even watching television these days is an exercise in channel surfing. Driving or being in the car is a time to make phone calls, send text messages, read the paper or simply update your status to “I’m in the car.”

We’ve become very efficient in the sense that we can do a lot of things simultaneously in a very short space of time. It is as if different parts of our bodies are wired to different things at the same time: our mind can be in one place, our eyes focusing somewhere else, our fingers doing something on their own.

However, does this efficiency make us more effective? Or better people?

At the office the scene is more or less similar. There is a meeting. Someone is making a PowerPoint presentation that requires feedback from those present for an executive decision. Chances are everybody else in the room is busy doing their own thing, poring over their mobile devices, conducting parallel discussions or chatting online, making other decisions on other issues, and this doesn’t include those in the meeting who are talking among themselves, daydreaming or too impatient to even listen, simply preferring to butt in at every available occasion. Everybody is busy. But nobody is focused.

So are we losing our depth, both in terms of attention and also in our character? Is the sheer multitude of multitasking making us so shallow that we can no longer differentiate between rudeness and good manners? Between what’s proper and what’s inappropriate?

Talking with your mouth full might still be seen as ill-mannered, however these days it seems perfectly normal for a polite conversation to consist of talking to the person in front of you plus the many others who you and the other person are also engaging in some form of virtual interactive dialogue.

All of this multitasking can be annoying, of course, and frustrating, especially if it gets in the way of a deep and meaningful discussion that requires a lot of feedback and participation from those present. Not to mention being a waste of meeting time.

The upside of it, however, is that a lot of meaningful, productive discussion and useful feedback can actually be gained by not having a physical meeting at all, but talking over one’s mobile devices, even as one is stuck in traffic or enjoying a massage, without having to be in the same room as grouchy colleagues.

(Desi Anwar: First published in The Jakarta Globe)

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