Ron
http://www.YourWritingDept.com

we sometimes do it well, sometimes not too well, guess the result tells us how far we have come with either the switching or the multitasking which ever way you all put it

ciao

گروه هنر و برنامه نويسي مهرگان – طراحي وب سايت

Regards,
Optifocus

Optician
IT Solutions

Multitasking is being pushed on us by multitask OSs

The difference between multitasking and switching has already been pointed out, but I’ll reiterate: Multitasking is doing multiple things concurrently, whereas switching is changing between a group of tasks frequently and doing a little of each at a time.

Examples:
Multitasking: drinking coffee and reading an article
Switching: drinking coffee and reading an article out loud

The ability (and effectiveness) of multitasking really depends on the tasks you are performing and how skilled you are at them. For example, most drivers approaching an intersection will apply the brakes, switch on the turn indicator, change gears, check traffic and plot their route through the intersection all at the same time and do it so naturally that they don’t even think about the fact that they just performed five actions concurrently (multitasking), whereas a coder focused on a difficult algorithm may not even hear their wife call them for dinner.

However, I believe Toby is really talking about switching. Again, the ability and effectiveness of switching is determined by the tasks and your ability to perform them. The most effective use of switching is when you do a second thing while waiting for a first thing to complete. By reducing the amount of time you spend doing nothing, you become more efficient. However, switching from something you are busy at in order to get busy at something else is inefficient. Unless the thing switched to has a higher priority than the first, in which case it should obviously be completed before returning to the first task.

Effective switching example: Having multiple chats open and replying to one while waiting for a reply from another.

Ineffective switching example: Having multiple emails open and writing a sentence at a time on each.

You just have to have your head on straight and not allow distractions. I say this as a designer and a mom of two (or three if you count the helpless husband). Just like in motherhood, you have to find your groove and go with it. I can cook dinner, answer emails, help with home work, listen to Dr. Phil and write a grocery list all at the same time with amazing accuracy so it is not that multi tasking does not work, it is that some people just don’t know how to multi task effectively.

We are not computers and multi-tasking is simply not possible. We need to time-box our day to allocate a fair amount of focus time to each thing that we want to accomplish. This also will help in figuring out if we have taken on too much. If you can’t allocate time for it it may not be that important.

J

Get it right!

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/03/multitasking_ma.html

There’s a consensus about the evils of multitasking, buy we all do it (I write this while I wait for a document to print and listening to Jean-Luc Ponty)

On the contrary of your opinion, Toby, there’s studies that advocates switching from one task to other, as we loose concentration doing one, same, task. How many times we were doing something very well, then blow it away on the end, ‘cose we get tired and lost our focus?

Good practice is to make pauses on some intervals (like 5min on every hour). After each pause, you switch on other task, or, during pause, you can “service” your interrupts.

So, multitasking (and polling) is good, interrupts are bad.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html

But it’s still true.

- Unomi -