Creative Reaction

Ars Technica lead me to this The New Atlantis article entitled The Myth of Multitasking. As an amateur “mutitasking” myth-buster (mentioning the myth here and alluding to it here) of course I took notice. I had no idea what a gold mine it would turn out to be! The article is quite simply the most comprehensive I’ve read on the subject. (And Creative Reaction readers may notice several of the article’s references have been mentioned on our pages.)

The article starts with what I think will become one of my all-time favorite quotes, “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.”

The article continues with a short history of multitasking, from its appearance on resumes as a “skill” and its subsequent exposure as a fraudulent ideal, quoting numerous studies, and pointing out that our very culture may be at stake. This is an article worthy of printing/reading/tagging/digging/forwarding to colleagues!