It’s in practically every job description: “Fast-paced environment; must be able to multi-task”. Employers once prized those employees who could put their entire attention to a task to be sure it was done right. Now, if you can’t prepare your powerpoint presentation while you carry out an important phone conversation , eat your yogurt lunch, and respond to the latest email from your boss, you may be headed for the glue factory.
Whatever happened to focusing on the task at hand, and to doing a thorough job? Is speed that much more important than accuracy? Is it really more productive to do so many things at once?
Has efficiency trumped effectiveness?
Ever since the early 20th-century time and motion studies of Frederick Taylor, workplaces have looked for ways to get employees to do more in an eight hour day (now a ten to twelve-hour day/night). Typing 75 words a minute was better than 60. Speeding up the testing of more water heater cylinders on the production line, even though the error rate for detecting defects increased, was valued in that industry.
The multi-tasking craze has taken the “doing more is better” thinking to the point where it even is affecting the quality of information we receive in our electoral process. Politicians are forced to sound-bite their way onto CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. Does our collective intelligence as an electorate increase proportionally with the more talking heads we listen to? (Remember the headline in the London Daily Mirror after the 2004 presidential election: “How can 59 million Americans be so dumb?).
I would love to see a research study to determine if there is a correlation between poorer decision-making and multi-tasking. And I would love to hear what you all think on this subject. Oops—gotta go, my cell phone is ringing, my cordless is ringing, I'm balancing a salad on my lap, and I’m trying to follow the stock market gadget on my desktop as I type this.
--TMW
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