Assorted Articles in Astoria

I was an Elementary schooler buckled into my car seat, stretching up to see out my window when my friend’s mom put on a podcast. She explained to me that podcasts were like TV with only the audio part, and that she often put on podcasts for her kids on long car rides.

I was disgusted by the idea and felt somewhat lost on what was happening in the podcast about dinosaurs. Were the pterodactyl sounds real? What did those people talking look like? Is that a kid’s voice? Which one is Janet? I would’ve much preferred to just yap with the people in the car (Yeah, I was a weird little kid and everyone else is normal 🙄)

Fast-forward to age 13 when I downloaded Spotify. My initial motive had been to play music without the screen staying on, but I soon discovered several language podcasts to help me learn languages far faster than with Duolingo.

But that wasn’t all. There were audiobooks (I like old-fashioned paper books, but I can see the usefulness) and stories and tons of other kinds of information that I could now absorb while multitasking.

But here’s the thing: Is multitasking really the best?

Some argue that multitasking isn’t even possible, but just about anyone can rattle off at least a few examples. Talking while jogging. Whistling while changing a light bulb. Listening to a podcast while studying. I suppose those people are referring to things that are less mindless, in which case they have a point.

But an overwhelming number of studies show that multitasking can lead to decreased productivity and getting less done. Going back to the Listening to a podcast while studying example, some of you may have thought that one seemed a bit off. Dividing your attention like that does exactly what it sounds like: it divides your attention between studying and the podcast, giving a smaller share to both. This leads to less information getting reinforced or memorized while you’re studying, as well as only part of the podcast being understood, since true complex multitasking is hardly achievable; what most people consider more complicated multitasking is just switching between tasks quickly (not immersing yourself in a task for more than a couple of minutes does wonders for the attention span, I’m sure). In the case of the studying student, he will have to go over the information again to understand all that he would’ve understood had he given his work his undivided attention the first time, and have to listen to the same podcast again at a later date.

So multitasking with something like a podcast can potentially divide your attention and hinder your other activity, even rendering itself useless through you only paying attention to it part of the time.

But what about other types of multitasking?

Perfecting your whistling skills while changing a light bulb for the millionth time doesn’t seem to take much away from either task, and it might even make staying on task with whistling easier because your hands are occupied and you won’t feel tempted to do something else besides sit still and whistle.

So, while most studies will harp on how horrible multitasking is, the studies that we conduct in our everyday lives show that sometimes multitasking isn’t so bad.

It seems that the bottom line is, multitasking is ok sometimes for certain, more mindless tasks, but it’s often better to focus on one complicated piece of work at a time.