Friday, March 12, 2010

Quickwrite: Multitasking vs. Concentration

This is a very old quickwrite, but I'm an uninspired individual who has not been actively thinking of any topics whatsoever for the past month or two :l I'm sure it's fine though.

Okay, multitasking. I have to say it's an important skill, but it does have its disadvantages. You can do as much as you want, but as Nicholas Carr says, you know less. It seems to make perfect sense to me actually. I suppose you can train yourself to multitask.. as in keep doing the same things over and over again to the point where it requires less concentration. Effortless.
Some things can be considered as what I like to call 'passive multitasking'. Something that doesn't take much brain power, but in reality it does use your senses. For example: listening to music. Tons of people listen to music no matter the situation such as doing work, walking down the street, purchasing goods, sleep, eat, read... You get where I'm going. Thing is, I believe it can also be a distraction. Strange, isn't it? You would think you wouldn't be truly concentrating on what you're listening to, but I know for a fact that I do. I get mentally sidetracked and start to listen to the music more attentively or sing along. I'm positive this happens to a lot of people fdsjkljFrance;klcjdlkj
One tricky thing to master in our book of multitasking would be deep thought. Like REAAAAL deep thought where you're just staring into space and caught into your own little world of absolute concentration. There's many examples to prove how hard to near impossible it is to successfully be in deep thought while doing some other stuff. As in more complex than walking or idly moving your hands or feet. I don't know.
BUT, I do recall a time where this has happened to me. I was attempting to apply the mobius strip into things like wheels or architecture. I don't know why I was thinking about it so hard, but I just couldn't stop. I just stared at my feet, occasionally drawing on my hand or in the air to kind of help me visualize. My friends were trying to talk to me at the same time and I just didn't want to break my concentration

Multitasking is second nature to humans (mostly for women, hahaha). So in reality, we constantly do it. You really wouldn't consider some of the things you do as multitasking since it's so easy (such as talking while walking). I suppose it's because through evolution our brain size has increased and stuff so tasks that would be considered difficult millions of years ago are now easy (duh derpderplollo). Even today I believe our ability to multitask is continuously growing even though we're nowhere near evolving. We're just that amazing.

ON THE CONTRARY,
We have been depending on technology and services for a long time and continue to do so. We're intelligent yet lazy people. So maybe our multitasking skills will decrease... You know, we have babbysitters to watch our babby.. Maids to clean houses..... Electric erasers..........

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