Multitasking & Modern Stress
Multitasking has always been around. Any primitive mother could tell you while holding the baby nursing, she would still make dinner. But in the recent decades, multitasking has taken on a technological significance in everyday activities that is so pervasive, no job or vocation seems possible without that necessity. In fact, the better you are at multitasking, the more likely you are to succeed.
There are exceptions, of course. Artists are mono-focused, writers too. Film directors used to be, but increasingly they have the role of producers as well, worried about all the minutiae of that business. Pilots and spacefarers are the ultimate multitaskers, with as many as fifty separate concerns at any one moment; it is why it takes so long to train the elite few who can manage all the systems and be proficient flyers.
Ever since the end of WWII, multitasking has grown exponentially. Cars used to be complex mechanical-only activities and then they put a radio in every car so that you are driving and listening to something unrelated at the same time. Perhaps that was the advent of our modern take on multitasking – doing two unrelated tasks at the same time. Typewriting used to encompass both mechanical function and mental composition. As they automated typewriters, did the mental composition get any easier? In cars, as they automated gear shifting, power brakes, ABS braking, power steering, computer-controlled ignition did driving get any less complicated? Well, yes it may have, but then they added GPS, stereo and DVD players, not to mention texting, text-to-speech features and now semi-robotic control. Think this reduces the multitasking of the driver? Hardly, ask any commuter.
Computer systems, the ones most of us use, are divided into two camps: Apple (7%) versus Windows/UNIX-based systems (93%). Apple designs computers that only handle one task at a time, making them the preferred tool of the so-called artistic people. When you are writing or composing music that’s all the computer is doing, nothing else. Windows computers are designed to allow many programs to operate at the same time. As I write this the email program is downloading email and the web browser is sending an FTP of mega files all the while a fax is coming in on the modem. Is one system better than the other? Users of either will swear one is. Their one. But Apple users think they are not multitasking. They are wrong. If they have more than one program open, their brain is multitasking, allotting schedules of use for each program, fitting the pieces together. For Windows users or UNIX users, they multitask by allocating function to each program open and checking frequently to see how things are going – is that email in yet?
iPhones have proved a great learning lesson for Apple computer users. Multitasking on iPhones is the rule, not the exception. Now Apple users know how 93% of the world copes with day-to-day use of Windows or UNIX systems. Multitasking is becoming so normal, so much a part of every job function, than none of us think about it anymore. But it is stressful. Think of it like this: Your computer (your brain) is juggling so many different tasks it can become overloaded and go blue-screen.
Why do we feel relieved when we do something simple? Fishing is never stressful. Neither is playing tennis. Why? Your brain is busy, you are busy, but in fact you may be physically busier. So why is it restful? Because you are not multitasking as you ski down that slope. You are “in the moment” you are mono-focused. That’s like a vacation for your brain.
Recent studies in Switzerland have shown that if you have a hobby, to which you devote 30 minutes a day (running could be such a hobby) you are more likely to be a calm, less-depressed individual. 30 minutes a day doing one task, any one simple task – cooking as a passion, bike riding, reading a book, writing letters to friends, gardening, walking the dog – anything that releases the need for multitasking is a holiday for your brain which prolongs your life and increases the quality of that life.
