It's taken me more than a week to post about Steve Lohr's recent New York Times article (registration required) about the perils of information overload and multitasking. Why? Because I've been too busy keeping up with the barrage of information that's competing with this very relevant story. But one section of the story struck a nerve with me:
The human brain, with its hundred billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of synaptic connections, is a cognitive powerhouse in many ways. “But a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two things at once,” said René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University.
Marois's research, notes Lohr, validates the point that we cannot concentrate on two things at once. So, perhaps it's time to stop talking about multitasking, a word that seems to imply that we can concentrate on two or more things at once. The better, more precise word is juggling. We all know how hard it is to juggle, and we all know the risks. The risks have been immortalized in an office cliche -- dropping the ball.
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