WebliminalBlog

When I teach I make a big deal about the notion of ‘paying attention.’ Not only to what is going on in class, but paying attention throughout our daily lives to the connections we come upon that help us better understand what we are wanting to learn. It’s difficult to do and takes some training. or working at to develop the skill. It is also an important part of Zen meditation and mindful behavior.

The goal in my classes, though, is not to teach the tenets of Zen Buddhism, but rather to help students learn the concepts, methodologies, and technologies that we deal with in classes in computer science. This notion of paying attention involves concentration and is the antithesis of multitasking.

Modern operating systems successfully implement multitasking on the computers and many other digital devices we use. Switching from one task to another involves a context-switch. In a computer this means copying information into CPU registers, and this occurs with a time penalty. The same thing happens with humans, we have to shift focus form one item to another. This takes attention away form one task and we have to move it to another. That is the problem. it is difficult to do one task well, to concentrate or pay attention to one item if we are anticipating switching to another.

To do two things at once is to do neither.
Publilius Syrus, Maxims. 1st Century BC 

A policy to help my students focus on one item at a time during class:

• No laptops or other computers  in class unless you sit in the last row. I prefer no laptops be open during class. If you must use one, please sit in the last row so that the screen will only distract you.
• No text-messaging in class. If it is an emergency, feel free to leave the classroom. Same policy for cell phone conversations.
• When you come to class please do not bring material from another class to work on. If you need to get something else done, it doesn’t make sense to me to have you waste hat time by sitting in our classroom.

What follows are several links to documents that address the issue of paying attention by doing one thing at a time.

• My Midwest Inflight Magazine » Task Mastering
  On a typical day you might answer e-mail, scan the Dow to see if your favorite stock has spiked, fill out an expense report and sit in on a conference call—probably all at the same time. A study from Day-Timers, Inc. reported that 62 percent of workers say they always or frequently feel they have to rush through their tasks. And a study by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London found that when workers are constantly juggling e-mails, phone calls and text messages, their IQs fall an average of 10 points.
  (tags: multitasking ineffective)
• About | Slow Leadership
  Slow Leadership offers ways of returning civilization and humanity to organizations.
  It is essential that leaders think more clearly and make better choices, free from today’s constant obsession with meeting unrealistic, short-term expectations.
  Slow Leaders are slow only in making irrevocable decisions or jumping to conclusions based on nothing but a quick glance and a belief in looking busy at all times.
  The most important characteristics of successful leadership are to be found within the leader, not in college courses or textbooks. This takes time and requires a long-term perspective that is the antithesis of “grab-and-go” management.
  (tags: leadership Slow)
• SitePoint » Why Multitasking is a Waste of Time
  Multitasking is great if you want to fill your time doing a lots of things not very well, over a long period of time. Sure you can: flicking between checking your email, Twittering, writing a report, trying a new web app and chatting on Facebook. Are you busy? Probably. Are you productive? Probably not.
  (tags: efficiency multitasking management ineffective)
• Human Task Switches Considered Harmful - Joel on Software
  When you’re managing a team of programmers, one of the first things you have to learn to get right is task allocation. That’s just a five-dollar word for giving people things to do. It’s known colloquially as “file dumping” in Hebrew (because you dump files in peoples’ laps). And how you decide which files to dump in which laps is one of the areas where you can get incredible productivity benefits if you do it right. Do it wrong, and you can create one of those gnarly situations where nobody gets anything accomplished and everybody complains that “nothing ever gets done around here.”
  (tags: programming Development management multitasking switching joelonsoftware ineffective)
• Publilius Syrus Quotes - The Quotations Page
  To do two things at once is to do neither.
  Publilius Syrus, Maxims
  (tags: quotes multitasking ineffective)