Disputing the myth that multitasking works

Gather ‘round, everyone. I want to share a story you might have difficulty believing – one that that begins with “Once upon a time,” but lacks a satisfying, happily-ever-after kind of ending. Are you up for that, or should I just shut up, close the book I was pretending to read from and let you figure out these things on your own?

Okay, this issue has been bugging me for a long time, which greatly reduces my chances of keeping my mouth shut, so I’m just gonna wade in: Once upon a time in a not-so-distant land known as “Right Here,” people did only one thing at a time, shocking as that might be.

Now, you may be thinking, “No way” and/or silently wondering how they could possibly have managed to fit everything they needed to achieve into a 24-hour period without ever doubling up on tasks in a single time frame. Based on your own experience, that likely seems impossible.

Granted, it was a more primitive time, when people were more interested in achieving a sense of personal satisfaction than being concerned over what their neighbors thought or were up to, especially those pesky Joneses everyone now wants to keep up with, who live in the condo next door.

Unfortunately, over time the need for constant comparison forced out contentment and left us feeling contentious and buying into the notion we were worthless unless we were constantly in motion. That type of self-loathing, possibly paired with watching professional jugglers, conspired to make us believe we should be able to consistently keep at least two balls up in the air or two irons in the fire at all times. Preferably both.

The fact constant over-engagement accomplishes nothing but stress was not factored into the equation. Texting while running with the big dogs – no matter which direction they were headed – became the expectation and normalized multitasking.

According to fastcompany.com, the term “multitasking” was first used in the 1960s, when it entered the cultural lexicon via IBM discussing computer functionalities. From there it snaked its way into ordinary households and workplaces where people seeking to “have it all” embraced it as a heavy-lifting strategy and consistently beat themselves up after failing to measure up to multitasking’s unrealistic promises.

Except in the case of Michigan drivers, whom I’ve previously described as having the ability to move their eyes independently of one another to simultaneously scan the roadway ahead for potholes and whitetails, multitasking is a myth of Trojan horse consequential scale: what we think we are getting is not just a facade, but delivers hidden consequences.

Stanford University brain activity researchers Kevin P. Madore, Ph.D. and Anthony D. Wagner, Ph.D. reported in the National Center for Biotechnology Information online journal, Cerebrum article “Multicosts of Multitasking” (Mar-Apr 2019), the human brain lacks the architecture for what we describe as multitasking – performing two or more activities at the same time.

What our brains are actually doing is switching back and forth between multiple tasks so rapidly that it seems like we are doing multiple things simultaneously. Madore and Wagner discuss the “switch costs” of supposed multitasking, which are reductions in performance accuracy or speed in addition to fatigue and generalized frustration.

Their analysis of this phenomenon is why I have always described multitasking as “doing several things poorly at once,” which frequently leaves me feeling like I’m running around like a chicken with my head cut off (please note: no real chickens were hurt during the mention of that metaphor).

Despite the recent research revealing multi-tasking to be a self-defeating proposition, the attractive concept continues to enjoy robust health in the business world. That had me reading with interest Alison Doyle’s antidotal online article “How to Answer Job Interview Questions About Multitasking.”

Attempting to educate the interviewer that multitasking is a myth could easily become a career-limiting move, so Doyle advises caution. Emphasize how you prioritize and project-manage work so the most important items get handled first without neglecting secondary items. It’s a delicate conversation, but essential until everyone gets on the same page about multitasking, which (hopefully) won’t require us to do something else at the same time we are trying to turn to it.

Renewing the ties that bind us to old friends

I had the delight last weekend of spending time with old friends. My English teacher mom, if still able, would insist I substitute the word “longtime” for “old” friends, the way she always did when a past student would walk up and introduce her to a companion as his “old” teacher.

“I believe ‘former’ teacher is what you meant, not ‘old’ teacher,” my mother would correct, “and certainly ‘former’ is more polite.” Then everyone would laugh, especially in the years after she had retired from teaching and actually was old by everyone’s standards, including her own. It makes you stop in your tracks and wonder who all you have inadvertently insulted through your poorly chosen adjectives.

But just for today, I am going to ignore my mom’s correction and preferences regarding the nuances of “old” because there are at least four songs I know of (and probably more) by the title of “Old Friends” which pay tribute to our long-running relationships with some of the most special and sacred people in our lives.

Christian recording artists Bill and Gloria Gaither have sung about old friends, as have country singer Chris Stapleton and the classic, but friction-prone folk duo Simon & Garfunkel. However, the version of “Old Friends” that’s currently running through my mind was the one popularized by Rosemary Clooney:

“Hey, old friend. Are you ok, old friend? What’ll you say, old friend? Are we unique? Time goes by – everything keeps changing. You and I, we get continued next week. Most friends fade or they don’t make the grade. New ones are quickly made – and in a pinch they’ll do. But us, old friends; what’s to discuss, old friend? Here’s to us. Who’s like us? Damn few.”

Spending time with those who knew you way back when is essential. Certainly now, culturally. old friends are like welcome pieces of driftwood to grab onto in the sea of relentless change. There’s something about our longest-running friendships where we don’t have to connect the dots like we must for other people – they know us well enough to understand our meanings – often even before we can attempt to express ourselves. And faster than our smart phones!

Old friends are well-steeped in the characters and dynamics of our lives in crucial ways that allow for shorthand and an occasional backhand: they can say things to us we would never tolerate from anyone else. We hear old friends with our hearts, knowing they truly have our best interests at heart.

Knowing you can rely on a friend who knows you inside and out is precious, like a rare gem, or, as the Gaithers harmonized, “Old friends, after all of these years, just old friends. Through laughter and tears, old friends. What a priceless treasure, old friends. Like a rare piece of gold, my old friends.”

As someone whose adult style of friendship doesn’t accommodate daily phone conversations, meet-ups at coffee shops and/or weekend shopping trips, spending time with those who knew me during my formative years is especially enriching.

Two hundred miles from my adulthood home, there for a work-related training, I spent an overnight with my childhood best friend and her dear mom, an elementary music teacher who’d been my second mother growing up and was still a life-enthusiast, post-stroke, at 86, who’d taught me to sing the round, “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.”

Reunited again, if only for a time (like Simon & Garfunkel), we unpacked our respective time capsules together. We shared meals, with memories as condiments, and stayed up later than usual recalling forgotten stories, laughing at previously unshared ones and cherishing what might be our last threesome reunion.

“Make it great to grow old, old friends, with all I will hold to old friends,” sang the Gaithers, “Now God must have known, there’d be days on our own, we would lose the will to go on. That’s why he sent friends like you along. Old friends, you’ve always been there my old friends; we’ve had more than our share; old friends, we’re all just millionaires in old friends.”

Ah, the untold riches and acceptance found amongst our old friends.

Quashing instinctive urges to squash spiders

Once in a while I read something that catches my attention by how it indicts my behavior. I almost said, “once in a while I read something that stops me dead in my tracks,” but isn’t that phraseology similar to one of the old taglines for Raid bug-killing spray? “Stops bugs dead in their tracks,” which would only serve to fuel the negative narrative of the topic I wish to discuss.

Please note my use of the word “narrative,” a term that has become increasingly trendy in recent years – trendy to the point that people can’t remember anymore exactly what “narrative” means. Will it be followed by a fable or will we hear a voice-over from an announcer summarizing the situation?

Some of us think a narrative signals a truth; whereas, false narratives are lies. Others of us don’t know what to think. In this case, narrative means my storyline, which is about to describe my love-hate relationship with spiders.

I’m the first to admit I judge other people by how I observe them treat nouns (people, places and things). I especially notice how they treat those classified as the most vulnerable or those who/that cannot be useful to them. You may be wondering what, if anything, that has to do with bugs. Well, nothing – but perhaps everything.

Last October, I happened upon an online article by Zaria Gorvett at bbc.com that was titled, “Why so many of us are casual spider-murderers.” That instantly caught my attention because when in doubt, I tend to squash arachnids first and ask questions later, if ever. This is not something I was taught, but something I came up with on my own and have never had occasion to discuss or to confess to anyone until now.

While I’m hardly what I would call “arachnophobic,” I have silently been a member of “the-only-good-spider-is-a-dead-spider” school of thought forever. Although I don’t go out of my way to seek out or to stalk spiders, and I usually try to keep my distance from eight-legged crawly creatures, that changes when they make the mistake of creeping too close for comfort and I feel it imperative to pre-emptively strike.

I don’t carry a business card that identifies myself as “Kristy Smith – spider-assassin” but neither did Clint Eastwood or Bruce Willis when portraying vengeance-based killers. Spiders build their careers around the element of surprise, so why shouldn’t I when dealing with? There’s no time to fire a warning shot when a jumping spider leaps out of my mailbox down the front of my shirt, but I can reactively whack it with a phony car warranty expiration come-on letter.

But after reading the beneficial effects Gorvett claims spiders have on our environment (i.e. ridding us of worse bugs), I felt a stab of conscience regarding arachnids and vowed not to harm the next one I encountered. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a large, medium-brown spider I found on the back wall of my bathtub when I next went to shower. No joke. Oh crap! Advanced spider-kill control right out of the gate!

Before getting into the shower, I identified the spider as a funnel (web) weaver from a photo I found online at the awesomely-named site somethingthingscrawlinginmyhair.com. I felt relatively safe provided I didn’t accidentally, while reaching for the shampoo, stick my hand near the mouth of its cleverly-constructed funnel tunnel where the shower curtain rod meets the wall.

Still, it was hardly to close my eyes under the shower spray, knowing I was not showering alone. I showered and toweled off in record time, proud of my newly-exercised humanitarianism. But later, at work, I made a decision to relocate my new, eight-legged friend outside once I returned home: more comfortable for both of us.

When I pulled back the shower curtain to announce my intentions, I was surprised to find the spider inhospitably crushed on the tub floor. “Who could have done such a thing?!” I wondered aloud as I scooped up the remains with toilet tissue and carried out a wastebasket burial.

“I found a huge spider in the shower this morning,” said my son at dinner, “but don’t worry, I took care of him.” Kinda.

Road less taken is looking mighty appealing

The issue of potholes along the roads I must travel regularly to and from home is disturbing. Never in my 42 years of driving these local main roads have I seen them so cracked and craterous – if that’s a word. And it’s not like there’s a less-taken, alternative road. This triggers many thoughts, none of them positive.

How many potholes stem from the late winter, early spring thaw-and-freeze Robert Frosty roller coaster we’ve been riding where you wear a parka one day and a tank top the next in response to the mercury reading? How much road damage was exacerbated by the pavement-gouging heavy equipment used to perform unwelcome safety tree removal procedures, which, ironically, seem to have led to more dangerous road conditions?

Will they get fixed? If so, when? If not, what the heck?! I’d like a refund on what I’ve paid in taxes so I can put the money toward an all-terrain vehicle with tracks to drive to my job so I can earn more money that can be taxed to pay for other kinds of “necessities” that don’t seem to be doing me or anyone I know a whole lot of good when it comes, quite literally, to navigating everyday life.

I’ve heard people joke about getting stopped by law enforcement for suspected drunken driving after being observed weaving back and forth across the road, straddling the center line and swerving off the pavement without warning and/or driving into a ditch in order to dodge some of the deeper potholes in their lane of traffic.

The common sense law enforcement response would be, “Due to the potholes, we’re more apt to stop someone who stays driving within his or her lane than someone who’s driving in and out of it.” Ain’t that the truth!

Speeding, which has historically been a problem on the local roads I travel is now a thing of the past. Between pothole avoidance and the highest-ever fuel prices, nobody can afford to do anything but creep along those routes.

That holds true even for the younger and more leaded-foot generation. When my son got his first vehicle, he created an anti-speeding reminder label he stuck across the truck’s speedometer panel, “Better to arrive late in this world than early into the next.” Amen.

However, speed is no longer a behavior that warrants a warning. In order to drive anywhere away from our home, we have to allow an extra 10 minutes of travel time to account for detours around crappy road conditions and to accommodate the slow-moving fellow motorists we meet who are doing the same thing. To drive even a fraction of the speed limit imperils your vehicle and other drivers.

The other day my daughter looked out our front door and saw kitty-corner from our yard an older man pulled over along the road, sporting a flat tire. While she helped him change it, he told her it occurred from zigging when he should have zagged through a nearby challenging series of potholes in our road. She told him he got off easy with only a flat.

Bless the saints with time on their hands and fluorescent spray paint canisters who brightly outline the exterior of deep potholes in warning to other drivers. How traumatic driver education must be now for both students and instructors due to the excessive potholes. I wouldn’t like to be steering through the pothole gauntlet, my life and my grade on the line, trying to stay in my own lane with my hands white-knuckled at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock on the wheel. The road conditions bring extra tension to already stressful learning conditions.

And don’t forget the deer dimension. Michiganders train our eyes to move independently of one another while we’re driving – one eye on the road searching for potholes and the other watching out for deer.

Recently at rainy dusk, I encountered an oncoming car straddling the centerline as a pothole-avoidance tactic, a gargantuan pothole in my own lane, and a decent-sized buck sprinting across the road. Fortunately, he didn’t trip in the gargantuan pothole.

If only I could drive my vehicle on the mythical road less taken, it would make all the difference.

Road less taken is looking mighty appealing

The issue of potholes along the roads I must travel regularly to and from home is disturbing. Never in my 42 years of driving these local main roads have I seen them so cracked and craterous – if that’s a word. And it’s not like there’s a less-taken, alternative road. This triggers many thoughts, none of them positive.  

How many potholes stem from the late winter, early spring thaw-and-freeze Robert Frosty roller coaster we’ve been riding where you wear a parka one day and a tank top the next in response to the mercury reading? How much road damage was exacerbated by the pavement-gouging heavy equipment used to perform unwelcome safety tree removal procedures, which, ironically, seem to have led to more dangerous road conditions? 

Will they get fixed? If so, when? If not, what the heck?! I’d like a refund on what I’ve paid in taxes so I can put the money toward an all-terrain vehicle with tracks to drive to my job so I can earn more money that can be taxed to pay for other kinds of “necessities” that don’t seem to be doing me or anyone I know a whole lot of good when it comes, quite literally, to navigating everyday life.  

I’ve heard people joke about getting stopped by law enforcement for suspected drunken driving after being observed weaving back and forth across the road, straddling the center line and swerving off the pavement without warning and/or driving into a ditch in order to dodge some of the deeper potholes in their lane of traffic. 

The common sense law enforcement response would be, “Due to the potholes, we’re more apt to stop someone who stays driving within his or her lane than someone who’s driving in and out of it.” Ain’t that the truth! 

Speeding, which has historically been a problem on the local roads I travel is now a thing of the past. Between pothole avoidance and the highest-ever fuel prices, nobody can afford to do anything but creep along those routes.  

That holds true even for the younger and more leaded-foot generation. When my son got his first vehicle, he created an anti-speeding reminder label he stuck across the truck’s speedometer panel, “Better to arrive late in this world than early into the next.” Amen.  

However, speed is no longer a behavior that warrants a warning. In order to drive anywhere away from our home, we have to allow an extra 10 minutes of travel time to account for detours around crappy road conditions and to accommodate the slow-moving fellow motorists we meet who are doing the same thing. To drive even a fraction of the speed limit imperils your vehicle and other drivers. 

The other day my daughter looked out our front door and saw kitty-corner from our yard an older man pulled over along the road, sporting a flat tire. While she helped him change it, he told her it occurred from zigging when he should have zagged through a nearby challenging series of potholes in our road. She told him he got off easy with only a flat.  

Bless the saints with time on their hands and fluorescent spray paint canisters who brightly outline the exterior of deep potholes in warning to other drivers. How traumatic driver education must be now for both students and instructors due to the excessive potholes. I wouldn’t like to be steering through the pothole gauntlet, my life and my grade on the line, trying to stay in my own lane with my hands white-knuckled at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock on the wheel. The road conditions bring extra tension to already stressful learning conditions. 

And don’t forget the deer dimension. Michiganders train our eyes to move independently of one another while we’re driving – one eye on the road searching for potholes and the other watching out for deer.  

Recently at rainy dusk, I encountered an oncoming car straddling the centerline as a pothole-avoidance tactic, a gargantuan pothole in my own lane, and a decent-sized buck sprinting across the road. Fortunately, he didn’t trip in the gargantuan pothole. 

If only I could drive my vehicle on the mythical road less taken, it would make all the difference.