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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us February 27, 2006 Tales From The Crib Hypertasking– the new multitasking Jennifer Margulis It’s five o’clock. I’m cooking a four-course meal (salad, mushroom spinach cakes, lentil stew, and fruit cups, not to mention the plain whole wheat pasta for the picky eaters in our family), listening with one ear to a CD of Vivaldi my husband is playing in the next room and with the other to an advanced Italian language tape. “Voglio andare alla Via Veneto,” I repeat, opening the oven to flip the cakes, shaking salt on the lentils and scooping orange peels into the compost container. I’m interrupted every few minutes by one of my daughters: “Mom, I need the tape,” “Mommy, can you get me another piece of paper, puh-leese?” In the newest lingo what I’m doing one ups even multitasking: it’s now called hypertasking — which, according to Trendwatch.com, is multitasking that invades all aspects of daily life. The word multitasking comes to humans via computers. When a computer multitasks, its Central Processing Unit simultaneously performs one or more tasks. In the 1990s “multitasking” became a popular buzz word in the business world, with supervisors urging their employees to become more efficient by performing several work-related tasks at once — checking voice mail while booting up the computer, catching up on e-mail while eating lunch, discretely drafting a memo during a business meeting, and so on. With the ingenious new multimedia gadgets of the new millennium, the frantic pace of performing several tasks at work is now invading our home lives as well. We now have cell phones that double as digital cameras, Palm Pilots that can be used to record our daily events and check our e-mail on simultaneously, and answering machines that ensure we can listen to our phone messages and eat dinner at the same time, without ever leaving the table. This isn’t a case of catching up on some reading on the john. It’s a full-fledged onslaught on our focus, our activities and our emotions. But not only is multitasking bad for your health (among other things it raises stress levels, which are associated with a rise in stress hormones, which in turn are responsible for a host of health problems including insomnia, weight gain, and an increased likelihood for cardiovascular disease), it’s inefficient as well. According to a highly publicized study published in the “Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance,” a publication of the American Psychological Association, switching between two tasks at once actually makes it harder to efficiently complete either task. The authors of the study analyzed how much time is lost when people repeatedly switch between two different tasks. In four experiments with young adults of different ages, they had subjects do tasks of varying degrees of difficulty and familiarity, like solving math problems and classifying geometric objects. For all of types of tasks, it was found that subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another. Although familiar tasks were accomplished in less time than unfamiliar tasks, researchers are now speculating that multitasking in general is less efficient than doing one task at a time. Dinner is ready. We turn off the telephone, the radio, the computer, the television, and the fax machine and sit down to eat uninterrupted. As we help ourselves to mushroom spinach cakes and lentil stew, everything is uncharacteristically quiet. In a moment it will be time to do the dishes, listen to the president’s state of the union address, and cajole my children into putting on their pajamas and brushing their teeth — all at the same time. But for the brief time that we are together at the table and no one is multitasking, life is decidedly more enjoyable. Jennifer Margulis is the editor of “Toddler: Real-Life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love” (Seal Press) and the author of “Why Babies Do That” (Willow Creek Press). She does her multitasking from her home in Ashland. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Generic Viagra Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Sportsbook Absinthe Supply Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations African Safari Hammocks Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino King of Spirits ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams