Multitasking
Language often limits how much I can do at one time
Our available time and attention are limited, so we are sometimes tempted to multitask. In multitasking, we divide our attention between two or more activities, carrying them forward at the same time. (I have previously written about our limited attention, and what it means to pay attention.)
Multitasking works quite well in computer systems, because the computing machinery is so much faster than everything else with which it interacts (people, storage, or input/output devices). However, as humans we’re generally quite bad at multitasking. People who think they’re good at multitasking are often lacking in self-awareness, inadvertently taking advantage of the tolerance of those around them.
Admittedly, there are some things that you can do at the same time: one famous example here is walking and chewing gum. Likewise, it’s possible to listen to the radio while driving, but already here we may start to run into attention-based limits. If something happens on the radio that requires focused attention, that thing is likely to compete with the attention required for driving. Most of the time, there’s enough margin for error in our driving habits that this temporary loss of attention isn’t a problem: we can be on “autopilot” for brief stretches of time. But if there’s a coincidence between something on the radio needing focused attention, and something in our driving needing focused attention – say, an unexpected pedestrian nearby, or a car suddenly swerving into our lane – then something bad will happen. In the better version, the driver reacts to the driving situation but has no idea what’s happening on the radio; in the worse version, the driver has an accident due to the distraction of the radio.
Sometimes the obstacle to multitasking is subtler than this example. From observing myself, I’ve concluded that I don’t have multiple independent language channels. If I am trying to listen to a conference call and simultaneously reading text, there comes a point at which I realize that I haven't been paying attention to the call. What's tricky about this contest for my attention is that it's not immediately obvious that I have run out of linguistic capacity when I start doing the reading. It appears that I have slightly more than one language channel, perhaps 1.2 or 1.5 language channels, and I can do a modest amount of “almost multitasking” for short periods of time. An alternative explanation might be that my call participation can proceed on autopilot for short periods of time, in much the same way as my driving can proceed on autopilot for short periods of time. Regardless of the underlying mechanism, the limit on my attention is real.
In contrast, I can happily and successfully participate in a conference call while I am doing a purely visual/physical “no-language” task, like assembling Lego bricks or weeding in a garden. Alternatively, I can successfully do “tiny-language” tasks that require only very short engagements with language processing: for example, filing, or opening pieces of mail and dealing with each of them.
However, any attempt to do two sustained language tasks at the same time is doomed to failure. When such conflicts arise, the crucial question to ask is whether I genuinely need to be on the conference call:
If not, the solution is to hang up.
If so, the solution is to stop language-based multitasking. In turn, that either means focusing only on the conference call, or changing my other tasks to be only no-language or tiny-language tasks.
Thanks for sharing your experience. We should talk more about these things and how we differ.
I can speak and listen at the same time. I can also think about one thing, or a series of things, while I am speaking, and while I am listening. I first realized this when managing a team, talking about one thing while someone asked a question, to which I thought of and queued an answer to them as soon as the first paragraph that I was speaking concluded.
Now, I often will listen to videos (often about progress in the devolution of the world these days, but also technical topics or other discussions), while listening to or reading something else. When I listen to abooks (audio books) while running, I generally listen at 2.25x speed now. And then sometimes have a running thought process about something else. It is possible that I am often multitasking because real-time speech is slower. But sometimes it feels like I am decoding two things at once. For me, the conflict is about whether they are on the same topic. My limit tends to be focus & working memory of a particular topic area in some sense. So I probably can't do two tasks of complex math at once, but math + something verbal, about another topic is fine.
A lot of it has to do with buffering. I vividly experience my output, speaking & typing buffering. I complete a series of thoughts, decide what I'm going to say, when just wait for that process to complete. Bored, I will think about something else, or work on my other task, if I am not skipping ahead on the main topic. There is some input buffering, and some ability to buffer more than one thing at once. Sometimes it is easy, other times fragmented, and sometimes things just conflict or I can't concentrate enough. It may be that some multitasking is mentally replaying a buffer to get up to speed just in time.
For things like driving or biking or inline skating vs talking, having discussions about anything, or mentally designing robotics mechanisms or software or venture ideas, there is very little overlap and few circumstances where one begins to interfere with the other.
I have a private pilot's license: I am federally certified to be able to do 5 things at once. This is mainly done with a 'scan', where every few seconds you review what you can see outside, listen to radio communications or talk, manage & talk to passengers, scan instruments, fly the plane + feel your situation, and track progress on a map. While this explicitly teaches you to go from task to task in a loop, in reality you gradually do more of these things as once without thinking about it. While you don't have your main attention on something, you might have less cognitive intelligence in charge of it, but there can be an automated attention that will respond to a range of things, call the main cognitive ability when something requires it. That's what it feels like for me anyway.