Comments on: The myth about multi-tasking

By: amagard

amagard — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:21:12 +0000

magiluke, thanks for clarifying. If we can view Henry Ford as the father of simple, specialized tasks, whom can be view as the inventor of multi-tasking ?
To some extent companies nowadays are giving up on this economic principle of specialication – not necessarily in manufacturing. But in the office for example in former times we have had secretaries to write letters. Thanks to e-mail today everyone has to type his letters on his own and secretaries are almost gone. We book our trips, our conference rooms and do thousand other things somebody else was taking care of in the past.
Jobs become more and more complex. As a software developer one also has to do design and testing and finally write user documentation and even may have to give support and sell his software. It depends on the way a firm is organized, but since savings achieved trough reducing number of people can be calculated easier than finding out the true cost of multi-tasking this is a trend I observe in these days.

By: magiluke

magiluke — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:15:46 +0000

Henry Ford came up with the idea of the assembly line. In an assembly line, each station has a specialized task that performed over an over again. This specialization is practically the opposite of multitasking, where you have to worry about many different things at once.

Also, if you look at the beginning of civilization, humans weren’t able to develop as a civilization until they stopped their “multitasking” (hunting, gathering, building their own tools and shelter, etc) and specialized in something. This specialization allowed them to focus on one thing, and become good at it. Then concepts such as trade developed, and allowed civilization to flourish.

Effectively, I was agreeing with what you said. Only I did it with a terse link.

By: amagard

amagard — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:29:11 +0000

Thanks for commenting, folks !
I think stress is not so much about how much work you have to do rather then whether you have to do something you don’t like to do. I am not sure how Henry Ford fits in here. He is seen as the father of mass production, but I am not sure how this is related to multi-tasking.
I agree, folks: multi-tasking is not a good thing for many people, but there are people who simply like to work like this. For them it would be probably more stress if they would be forced to do one thing after the other

By: empressofdrac

empressofdrac — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:05:50 +0000

I’m guilty of multi-tasking…tsk…tsk…

but i guess this is what most people are doing nowadays…

anyways, you’re definitely right…it can lessens ones task quality…

By: totaltransformation

totaltransformation — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:13:29 +0000

Amen. For most folks multi-tasking is not a good thing.

By: magiluke

magiluke — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:12:51 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford

By: Transcontinental

Transcontinental — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 08:53:48 +0000

Interesting, though I believe stress is related to ability ; I mean, a “Gemini” profile is inclined to see much and dig little, while a “Scorpio” profile would be the opposite, for instance. Perhaps true stress is trying to combine a wide scan of interests with a deep inquisition for each of them.