Multitasking is one of the supreme aspirational terms of modern mechanical magic. When you are multitasking, the assumption goes, you are embodying the epitome of contemporary productivity. To multitask effectively is, for some, a supreme professional and personal aspiration, because it means to be making the best possible use of that most precious quantity—time itself.
Etymologically, there’s little that needs explaining: the word is a portmanteau of multi (Latin, “many”) and task (ultimately derived from the Old French tasque, meaning “tax” or “duty”). What is interesting, however, is the fact that the word multitasking originated entirely in the context of computing—describing the scheduling of different tasks for processing—and was then subsequently extended as both a description and an aspiration for human actions.
Machine multitasking was, from the early days of computing, a necessity for allowing machines with often slow processors to perform more than one task simultaneously. With the right programming, it became possible for machines to perform more and more tasks without slowing down. The idea of “threading” is also important in this process, a “thread of execution” being defined in computer science as the most basic process that a computer’s operating system can schedule. A computer, in other words, operates on a fundamental level as a kind of loom for the multiple threads of its processes, weaving them around each other in order to execute complex tasks.
This, clearly, is very different from the way in which the human mind operates—which is why the tendency to apply a machine-born word like multitasking to human activity is so interesting. Its implication is that to be engaged by multiple complex tasks simultaneously is desirable and efficient. Yet a mounting body of research suggests that, when it comes to any tasks requiring serious thought and attention, human multitasking is something of an illusion—and that what takes place when multiple demands are made of the mind is something closer to simple distraction.
One everyday example is the use of cell phones when driving—a habit that’s increasingly being banned in many countries on the basis of evidence of its dangers. In offices, however, it’s still quite normal for people engaged in tasks every bit as demanding as driving to be constantly interrupted by email, calls, messages, and the general accoutrements of the modern multitasked office and its technological systems.
Thinking differently is something that can be helped by using different words, and there’s one particular phrase in this field that can be useful: Continuous Partial Attention. Coined in 1998 by the writer Linda Stone, it describes the state of constantly and largely unconsciously skimming across the surface of a large amount of different sources of information. Unlike multitasking, this isn’t a business of focus and self-discipline so much as an attempt to go with the flow of information suffusion—and it suggests an important counterpoint to the belief that it’s possible for people to, machine-like, juggle threads of activity seamlessly and without loss.39