Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
Speaker 2: and we're doing this on our own, flying high like
Speaker 2: an eagle to the seat. No, no, no, and this
Speaker 2: is stuff you should know. No, no, no.
Speaker 1: I'm so annoyed at this.
Speaker 2: The episode from twenty eleven that we somehow recorded in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: It feels that way a little bit, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Yes, it does, it really does.
Speaker 1: I think I was annoyed because and I put this
Speaker 1: one together, so it's my fault, but like I feel
Speaker 1: like it was just like, well, this study says this
Speaker 1: about multitasking, and this study says this, and this study
Speaker 1: says this.
Speaker 2: I think you feel that way because that's exactly what
Speaker 2: it does.
Speaker 1: There's just no good story here. I think that's my problem.
Speaker 2: There is there is. I think the story is is
Speaker 2: that we're going to like flip everybody's wig because it
Speaker 2: turns out that multitasking is a myth, a fraud. You
Speaker 2: shouldn't even try to do it because not only is
Speaker 2: multitasking impossible for you to do puny human, it actually
Speaker 2: makes you worse at what you are doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there are people plenty of people who
Speaker 1: think they're great multitaskers. Yeah, they may be among the
Speaker 1: very small small percentage of people who are super taskers,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about, but more than likely they probably
Speaker 1: just think they're getting a lot more done by switching
Speaker 1: back and forth between a bunch of different things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when they're really really not. And that's really what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. Multitasking isn't even really multitasking, it's just it's
Speaker 1: task switching very fast.
Speaker 2: That's a much much better description of a task switching,
Speaker 2: because when you're trying to do multiple things at once,
Speaker 2: even something as simple as say like baking a cake,
Speaker 2: like stirring like the batter while you're talking on the phone,
Speaker 2: you're not actually doing those two things at the same
Speaker 2: time as far as your brain is concerned. It's basically
Speaker 2: flipping back and forth to make sure you're doing them
Speaker 2: both adequately. And we actually can do something as simple
Speaker 2: as that fairly well. But the more complex the tasks get,
Speaker 2: and the more numerous the tasks get, everything just starts
Speaker 2: the short circuit and you sit there and wake up
Speaker 2: every morning and wonder why you're still so tired and
Speaker 2: stressed out all the time. It's multitasking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, since you said short circuit, we should mention the
Speaker 1: origin of the term is from a computer ad in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five IBM report basically talking about their new
Speaker 1: IBM system three sixty and talking about a computer's ability
Speaker 1: to multitask or process tasks at the same time. And
Speaker 1: since then, since the nineteen sixties, that really took hold
Speaker 1: as far as a catchphrase, and psychologists have gone wild
Speaker 1: with doing studies and experiments to see what are the
Speaker 1: limits of the human brain as far as taking on
Speaker 1: multiple things at once, which again, is it exactly at once,
Speaker 1: Like you can do things like at the same time,
Speaker 1: like bake air, stirring batter and talking on the phone.
Speaker 1: But I think generally when people are talking about multitasking today,
Speaker 1: they think more about I'm sitting at my computer and
Speaker 1: I've got like five different tabs that are sort of
Speaker 1: doing different things, and I'm also emailing and I'm researching this,
Speaker 1: and I'm doing that at the same time.
Speaker 2: And somebody's texting me and I'm getting push notifications. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a thing for sure. That's one reason why it's
Speaker 2: worth talking about, because if it's not actually effective and productive.
Speaker 2: People should know that because it's becoming such a huge
Speaker 2: part of our modern world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, So let's talk about it today.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, sadly you already hit on the fact of
Speaker 2: the podcast that multitasking comes from an IBM AD, but
Speaker 2: you said that psychologists had gone I thought that joke
Speaker 2: would have gone over better. You said that psychologists had
Speaker 2: gone wild like trying to figure out the computational processing
Speaker 2: power of humans, And I think that's actually one of
Speaker 2: the first problems that IBM AD kind of set it
Speaker 2: up for us to view the human brain as a computer,
Speaker 2: and that's not an exact analogy, which is why I
Speaker 2: think we thought we could multitask for a while, because
Speaker 2: we even thought computers could. But it wasn't until the
Speaker 2: advent of multi core processors that computers themselves could actually
Speaker 2: process more than one thing at the same time. At
Speaker 2: the outset, including for the IBM System three sixty, the
Speaker 2: computer with a single CPU was not actually multitasking. It
Speaker 2: was doing the same thing that our brains do. It
Speaker 2: was jumping back and forth between tasks really fast to
Speaker 2: make sure it was doing them both adequately. So when
Speaker 2: we kind of figured out that there was a problem
Speaker 2: with processing, that there were limits to it. We established
Speaker 2: very quickly something called a processing bottleneck. That, yeah, there is.
Speaker 2: It's documented humans do not multitask to begin with, and
Speaker 2: when we try to multitask, the results are terrible. And
Speaker 2: it seems to be because there's like too much stuff
Speaker 2: is trying to get through too narrow a passageway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and some people think that, you know, this bottleneck
Speaker 1: happens most severely when you're trying to plan like an
Speaker 1: action that you're going to do at the same time
Speaker 1: as you're trying to retrieve something from your memory bank.
Speaker 1: Memory plays a big part in all of this. And
Speaker 1: what we're doing, like we said, we're task switching. We're
Speaker 1: performing things in sequence. So you're switching back and forth
Speaker 1: very quick, you think, But there is something called a
Speaker 1: switching cost. So every time that you're like you and
Speaker 1: I are researching or something and we're like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: I forgot we need to email Jerry about something, and
Speaker 1: so I'll stop real quick and email Jerry and it
Speaker 1: seems very seamless and then I go back to my work.
Speaker 1: But there is a cost to that switch there where
Speaker 1: it takes. It takes a second or two for your
Speaker 1: brain to kind of ramp back up into what you
Speaker 1: were on previously. May not seem like a lot, but
Speaker 1: when you add that up over a lifetime of work,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of inefficiencies going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So the switching costs is just a
Speaker 2: time lag, a loss of productivity when you go from
Speaker 2: one task to another, right, and especially if we're trying
Speaker 2: to do two tasks at the same time, which we can't,
Speaker 2: but we're switching back and forth over and over again,
Speaker 2: that switching cost becomes more and more dramatic. And so
Speaker 2: those two tasks, neither one of them gets done very well.
Speaker 2: And there's theories about what's going on here. There's some
Speaker 2: rival ones. The first one that was established, I think
Speaker 2: as far back as the sixties. It's called the psychological
Speaker 2: refractory period effect. And the psychological refractory period paradigm basically
Speaker 2: says that when we're presented with two tasks that are
Speaker 2: presented in quick secession, the response to task two is delayed. Right,
Speaker 2: that's documented, we know that. But here's why they're saying that.
Speaker 2: It's because the brain is still processing the response to
Speaker 2: the first stimulus task one. So response to the response
Speaker 2: to task two has to wait. And so the difference
Speaker 2: in time between task two when that when we're presented
Speaker 2: with that task and response one when we're complete the
Speaker 2: first task. That period is called that refractory period, and
Speaker 2: then it's followed by response too. So there's a there's
Speaker 2: a gap, there's a chunk of time where we just
Speaker 2: can't do anything for task two because our brains are
Speaker 2: still working on task one, and then finally when we
Speaker 2: complete task one, we can start on task two. And
Speaker 2: that time in between that's the refractory period, and that's
Speaker 2: what counts for that delay in response time, because our
Speaker 2: response to task one is typically shorter than our response
Speaker 2: to task two. So task two is completed in a
Speaker 2: longer amount of time than task one was because it
Speaker 2: was it was given to us while we were still
Speaker 2: trying to complete task one.
Speaker 1: Right. Uh, that's a good way to put it. Like,
Speaker 1: there's no progress being made that in that downtime.
Speaker 2: Right, No, not at least on task two from what
Speaker 2: I can tell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't even think you're I mean, I
Speaker 1: think guess you're putting to bed task one. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's real progress being made at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why some people. That's so that's a new version,
Speaker 2: that's part of the rival interpretation. They're like, no, this
Speaker 2: actually seems like you're not still completing task one during
Speaker 2: that refractory period while you're waiting on tests two. There
Speaker 2: seems to be a blank spot where you're not able
Speaker 2: to do anything when you're switching from one to the other.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I gotcha.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's the new interpretation.
Speaker 1: Well, what they're talking about though, is the brain. And
Speaker 1: when you look at the parts of the brain, the
Speaker 1: prefrontal cortex is the one that is you know, if
Speaker 1: you're doing something, you're paying attention to something, it's your
Speaker 1: prefrontal cortex that is at work and it spans, as
Speaker 1: we know, the left and right sides of the brain,
Speaker 1: and it's coordinating with each other when you're doing one
Speaker 1: thing at a time. If all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: have two things, then the left side of your brain
Speaker 1: is doing something, the right side of the brain is
Speaker 1: doing something, and it's split up and that's where that
Speaker 1: inefficiency really kicks in, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's based on a French fMRI study from twenty ten.
Speaker 2: Back in the ear where we used to call the
Speaker 2: MRI the Wonder Machine. You remember that, right, So this
Speaker 2: is like prime vintage Wonder Machine type study where they
Speaker 2: found that you can still do a couple of tasks
Speaker 2: that it does seem like there's a certain amount of
Speaker 2: parallel processing the brain can do when it splits the
Speaker 2: two lobes, the two frontal lobes up and says, here,
Speaker 2: you do this, and you do this. We can still
Speaker 2: kind of do it, but neither one is as good
Speaker 2: or as fast as if we just did one after
Speaker 2: the other. That's the big joke for multitasking. But if
Speaker 2: you add a third one, the brain just goes hey,
Speaker 2: wires just completely goes kaputz.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like two one is ideal two as possible, and
Speaker 1: again we're not talking about supertaskers, which we'll get to.
Speaker 1: And three is just don't even try. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: What have you been trying to do that for?
Speaker 2: Or as the French researcher said, forget about it? Right?
Speaker 1: Oh man, that got me. I thought you were about
Speaker 1: to hit me with a good French phrase. No, I
Speaker 1: love it. There was another study conducted at Vanderbilt Universe
Speaker 1: Go commodores, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're easy like Sunday morning.
Speaker 1: They are, Oh boy, you're on a roll where they
Speaker 1: talk about the brain exhibiting what's called a response selection bottleneck.
Speaker 1: Another bottleneck, but this one's a little different. If you're
Speaker 1: tasked with doing several things at one time, the brain
Speaker 1: says what's more important, and so it sort of chooses
Speaker 1: for you. But I also saw some other studies that
Speaker 1: said that what also might be going on is you are,
Speaker 1: maybe subconsciously, if you're trying to juggle two things, the
Speaker 1: one that you're really paying the most attention to is
Speaker 1: either the one that gives you the most pleasure or
Speaker 1: the one that maybe can be completed as like a
Speaker 1: sub goal.
Speaker 2: Yes, so that's kind of a different interpretation too. So
Speaker 2: these are kind of rivals to the refractory period paradigm,
Speaker 2: and they're basically saying, like, our brains actually require a
Speaker 2: moment switch and like we've kind of established in that
Speaker 2: moment we're not actually doing anything. But these two different
Speaker 2: ones that these two kind of interpretations that you just mentioned,
Speaker 2: they strike me as kind of tomato tomato because they're
Speaker 2: essentially saying the same thing. One is that you know,
Speaker 2: the brain has to decide which activity is important, and
Speaker 2: that it takes more time. The other one from David Meyer,
Speaker 2: University of Michigan is saying, well, the brain has this
Speaker 2: thing called adaptive executive control that says this priority is
Speaker 2: more important than this priority, So I need to work
Speaker 2: on this one first. It's it's the same thing. Like
Speaker 2: I genuinely could not find what the distinction is. And
Speaker 2: there's even some bad reporting on some of this stuff
Speaker 2: where I saw David Meyer and his study from University
Speaker 2: of Michigan was essentially described to suggest that that it's
Speaker 2: showing like, oh, yeah, we can, we can do multitasking,
Speaker 2: we can process in parallel, and that's not at all correct,
Speaker 2: like he's saying like you can't do that at all.
Speaker 2: I don't know how it got all kind of messed
Speaker 2: up like that, But there doesn't seem to be anybody
Speaker 2: who says, no, we actually can. Everyone every single study
Speaker 2: is it shows that we can't. The difference between the
Speaker 2: studies is trying to interpret the results in different ways
Speaker 2: to explain why we can't or what happens when we try.
Speaker 1: All right, so we're going to multitask. Now take a break,
Speaker 1: I read a couple of ads, and we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: All right. So we're back with multitasking. I mentioned early
Speaker 1: on that memory, memory recall, when you're trying to do
Speaker 1: something else can really suffer, and so we should talk
Speaker 1: about memory a little bit. There's a guy named George
Speaker 1: Miller who was a psychologist at Harvard who basically says
Speaker 1: the human brain, as far as recall goes, is centered
Speaker 1: around the number seven, with a little variation up and
Speaker 1: down by two. So he's done studies where they basically
Speaker 1: just say, hey, repeat these numbers after me. And what
Speaker 1: they found is the average number of numbers that someone
Speaker 1: can repeat back to somebody is seven, and again it
Speaker 1: goes up and down a little bit. Some people are
Speaker 1: inherently just going to be much better at that and
Speaker 1: maybe can rattle off fifteen, but the average came down
Speaker 1: to seven. So what people do when they're trying to
Speaker 1: learn things or make something memorable is parse things out
Speaker 1: and separate them into smaller bits for storage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so we do that with telephone numbers, social
Speaker 2: security numbers, any string of ten numbers. We almost always
Speaker 2: put hyphens or dots or something together. Dates. It's just
Speaker 2: almost like an inherent thing that we do, an intuitive thing.
Speaker 2: But we do that to make it easier on our
Speaker 2: working memory. Remembering three sets of three numbers is easier
Speaker 2: for our brains to keep in our working memory than
Speaker 2: one long set of nine numbers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess there's no reason a social
Speaker 1: security number should have those dashes, right.
Speaker 2: I think that's exactly why it has dashes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you can so you can remember, so I
Speaker 1: can just rattle out two eight seven nine six nine
Speaker 1: four seven three.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I hope that's not legit?
Speaker 1: What so like, what could someone do with that?
Speaker 2: Are you the LifeLock guy? Now, of course that's not.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised I was able to even do that successfully
Speaker 1: without saying my real social security number.
Speaker 2: It was really impressive. Actually, how is it a bunch
Speaker 2: of numbers? So just kind of as a side note,
Speaker 2: we've been talking a lot about working memory, and that's
Speaker 2: a huge part of multitasking, because when you multitask, you
Speaker 2: are you're not You're by definition, not completing one thing
Speaker 2: before moving on to the other. You're stopping mid task
Speaker 2: to move on to something else, which you probably stop
Speaker 2: mid tasks to go back to the first one or
Speaker 2: go to a third thing. That's what multitasking is like.
Speaker 2: There's no, if you do it sequentially rather than at
Speaker 2: the same time concurrently, then you're not multitasking. So it
Speaker 2: requires working memory, it requires attention, it requires self regulation,
Speaker 2: It requires an ability to keep goals directed in the
Speaker 2: back of your head and also to be able to
Speaker 2: place those goals on pause while you move on to
Speaker 2: another goal. And if you have ADHD, you are you
Speaker 2: have a challenge with every single one of those things. Memory, attention,
Speaker 2: self regulation, goal direction. So it's Multitasking is really really
Speaker 2: hard for people with AIDHD because it requires a lot
Speaker 2: of functions that a lot of people with ADHD struggle with.
Speaker 2: The big difference is in a lot of I think
Speaker 2: I read at least one study it's like, well, if
Speaker 2: you have ADHD, you know you're just completely distracted all
Speaker 2: the time. You should be really good at multitasking because
Speaker 2: in that what multitasking is. And it's like, absolutely not,
Speaker 2: that's just not at all. So I mean you, yes,
Speaker 2: you're more distracted. But people with ADHD, they they're slightly
Speaker 2: deficient in a really important ability in multitasking, which is
Speaker 2: quickly diminishing the size of that switching cost right where
Speaker 2: you go from one task to the other, you're you're
Speaker 2: if you're if you don't have ADHD, you're a lot
Speaker 2: better at picking up that second task. That that gap
Speaker 2: between switching is shorter with ADHD, it's longer. And then
Speaker 2: the other problem with multitasking in ADHD is that if
Speaker 2: you become hyper aroused when you multitask, and hyper arousal
Speaker 2: leads to much more elevated levels of stress and people
Speaker 2: with ADHD, which makes them even more prone to error
Speaker 2: and to frustration and all sorts of stuff. That makes
Speaker 2: multitasking that much harder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and good setup for our eventual hopefully coming soon
Speaker 1: ash ADHD episode. We've already got the stuff kind of culled,
Speaker 1: but it's a lot, it's a big episode. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I know people have been asking for it for a
Speaker 1: long time. So anyway, that's that's coming down the pike.
Speaker 1: But one thing that we have roundly seen in study
Speaker 1: after study is when you try to multitask or task
Speaker 1: switch back and forth, is that your work suffers. Not
Speaker 1: only are you taking longer to get things done than
Speaker 1: you would if you did it sequentially, and by sequentially
Speaker 1: we mean completing a task and then moving on to
Speaker 1: the next. That not only are you taking more time
Speaker 1: when you think you're not. You think you're actually being
Speaker 1: more efficient maybe if you're you know, living a lie
Speaker 1: like most of us are, but you're actually doing less
Speaker 1: the work is less good and you're making more mistakes
Speaker 1: along the way as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you say that it can take up to
Speaker 2: double the time or more? No. Yeah, when you try
Speaker 2: to multitask. If let's say you're doing your test with
Speaker 2: making a paper airplane and then shaving a bunny, if
Speaker 2: you try to do those two things at the same time,
Speaker 2: it will actually take sometimes twice as long when you
Speaker 2: try to do them at the same time. Then it
Speaker 2: will if you make the paper airplane and then shave
Speaker 2: the bunny, try to do them at the same time
Speaker 2: twice as long, and then you're probably gonna give the
Speaker 2: bunny a bad haircut, and your paper airplane's gonna have
Speaker 2: a wonky wing and it's not gonna fly.
Speaker 1: Sorry, shaving the bunny sounds like a very dirty euphemism.
Speaker 2: If that didn't even occur to me, you're a dirty
Speaker 2: old man, he says.
Speaker 1: You know, man, Hey, I'm just a regular guy likes
Speaker 1: to shave the bunny, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Oh god, see it's dirty, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm blessing right now.
Speaker 1: When when I put it that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in addition to it taking longer, didn't you
Speaker 2: also say that the work suffers as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They've shown on in work studies and stuff like that
Speaker 1: that you know, you can have up to a forty
Speaker 1: percent loss in productivity if you're at your computer at
Speaker 1: work and you're checking social media and you're doing quick
Speaker 1: email checks and a quick browse to look up where
Speaker 1: you know Tom Petty was what high school he went to? Like,
Speaker 1: all that stuff takes a couple of seconds, but it
Speaker 1: compounds throughout the day and you end up like forty
Speaker 1: percent less efficient. And those are just things that can
Speaker 1: happen at work, Like there are actual real dangers when
Speaker 1: you start putting people in automobiles.
Speaker 2: Let's say, right, and Tom Petty went to Gainesville Heigh
Speaker 2: School in Gainesville, Florida.
Speaker 1: Was it Gainesville High?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, I knew he grew up there. I just didn't
Speaker 1: know if it was, you know, the actual Gainsville High School? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the one or a rival school.
Speaker 2: Nope. So driving a car is just dangerous enough, just
Speaker 2: even if you're doing it right but since the advent
Speaker 2: of smartphones, the ubiquity of smartphones, people have gotten really
Speaker 2: really careless. Yeah. Dangerous, Yeah, I mean like there's nothing
Speaker 2: more shocking and angering to me. And driving past somebody
Speaker 2: who's just staring at their phone like they're they're not
Speaker 2: even like like looking up every once in a while,
Speaker 2: they're just watching a video on their phone. It drives
Speaker 2: me crazy, and so I'm like, of course crashes have
Speaker 2: gone up at a million percent. There's no actual good
Speaker 2: studies or data on how many crashes are caused by
Speaker 2: people distracted by their phones. The best I could find
Speaker 2: was a study from twenty twenty two, and it estimated
Speaker 2: that only two point there's only been a two point
Speaker 2: seven percent increase since the advent of smartphones in crashes,
Speaker 2: an extra thirty five hundred crashes each year. None of
Speaker 2: those thirty five hundred is justified or something to sneeze at,
Speaker 2: but I would have guessed it was way more than that.
Speaker 2: And apparently there are more dangerous things you could do
Speaker 2: than be distracted by your phone, some of which we've
Speaker 2: been doing ever since we started driving, like eating while driving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or writing a letter long hand, or reading.
Speaker 2: The newspaper, shaving a bunny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, eating while driving is very dangerous. There's
Speaker 1: a study in twenty twenty one where fifty percent of
Speaker 1: drivers say they eat while they drive. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people eat and drink while they drive
Speaker 1: and they think, well, that's not really that big of
Speaker 1: a deal. But the NHTSA says it sixty five percent
Speaker 1: of near miss accidents are due to eating and drinking
Speaker 1: behind the wheel. And if you're doing that, if you're
Speaker 1: eating or drinking behind the wheel, it increases your chances
Speaker 1: of being in an accident by eighty percent.
Speaker 2: That's shocking.
Speaker 1: That is shocking. Coffee, they said, is the most dangerous
Speaker 1: thing to consume while driving, and this is one of
Speaker 1: the favorite things I've read in a long time. Other
Speaker 1: dangerous foods that they listed are soups, tacos, chili, Hamburger's barbecue,
Speaker 1: fried chicken, and donuts, especially jelly filled donuts. Yeah, soft
Speaker 1: drinking chocolate. But who's eating soup while they drive.
Speaker 2: I've not tried to eat soup, but I am guilty
Speaker 2: of trying to eat chili while I was driving. Before
Speaker 2: you mus like, this is ridiculous. You can't get chili
Speaker 2: on road trips any longer?
Speaker 1: Would you stop by Wendy's?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was, was it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh man, I've had Wendy's Chilian so long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this wasn't any time recent, but it was, you know,
Speaker 2: it was a big moment in our life relationship.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean I've had moments where I've been on
Speaker 1: a road trip and eating while I'm driving and been like,
Speaker 1: oh crap, like I've swerved into the wrong lane or something.
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait, what am I doing? This is completely
Speaker 1: especially if you're like, you know, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: mayonnaise up a hamburger or something like that. Not that
Speaker 1: stuff is good to do while you're driving.
Speaker 2: No, or like dunk some nuggets and sauce or something
Speaker 2: like that. That's a small target when you're going eighty
Speaker 2: miles an hour, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you got a churo and some chocolate sauce,
Speaker 1: you're trouble.
Speaker 2: Some of these foods they they actually qualified, like why
Speaker 2: they were on the report, like fried chicken. They said
Speaker 2: a lot of people lick their fingers afterward, just depending
Speaker 2: on what you've done with your fingers recently, you do
Speaker 2: not want to lick them, especially while driving. But that's
Speaker 2: why fried chicken's on there, jelly filled donuts or powdered
Speaker 2: because you can very easily drip on yourself and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden you're looking down like trying to clean
Speaker 2: powdered sugar off you. I think coffee was on there,
Speaker 2: just because so many people drink coffee while they're driving. That.
Speaker 2: Of course, just proportionately speaking, it's going to be one
Speaker 2: of the highest food related or crash related foods.
Speaker 1: You're probably right. And fried chicken, I'm an expert. Unless
Speaker 1: it's like a nugget or a finger, it's a two
Speaker 1: handed affair generally, unless you have like a chicken leg.
Speaker 1: But when you're eating something with fried chicken with bones,
Speaker 1: it's a two handed affair. And you're also not something
Speaker 1: you just bite into like a cheeseburger, because there are bones.
Speaker 1: It's a little more, it bears more concentration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got a big old breast or a thigh,
Speaker 2: you have to like basically palm it if you're eating
Speaker 2: it one handed, And that's not how you're supposed to
Speaker 2: eat fried chicken.
Speaker 1: Oh man, we should talk about schooling a little bit,
Speaker 1: because there's obviously been a lot of studies about multitasking
Speaker 1: and its effect on learning and stuff like that, And
Speaker 1: there are studies that have found that it will really
Speaker 1: affect your academic success. And if you have high levels
Speaker 1: of multitasking in class or like while you're trying to
Speaker 1: do homework, it's going to you know, just like your job,
Speaker 1: it's going to have serious deleterious effects on your grades.
Speaker 2: It's true, but depending on what you do. I thought
Speaker 2: this was interesting but also kind of intuitive as well.
Speaker 2: It depends on what you're doing while you're multitasking. Of course,
Speaker 2: the study found that Facebook and text messaging were related
Speaker 2: to lower or poorer academic performances, while searching online and
Speaker 2: emailing were less related to poor academic performance. And that
Speaker 2: makes sense, Like, if you're on Facebook or you're texting,
Speaker 2: you're probably not getting to the bottom of the research
Speaker 2: paper you're writing, right, Yeah, if you're searching online or
Speaker 2: you're emailing, there's a much higher chance that you are
Speaker 2: trying to find an answer you are engaged in research,
Speaker 2: So that makes sense. That's more And this is a
Speaker 2: problem when you're talking about multitasking, Like studies, they very
Speaker 2: easily conflate distractions and multitasking. Yeah, and we yes, we
Speaker 2: do multitask and a lot of on a lot of
Speaker 2: occasions because we are being distracted, right, and so we
Speaker 2: have to like kind of do something while we're still
Speaker 2: doing the thing we're meant to be doing. But they're
Speaker 2: not exactly the same thing, although they do seem to
Speaker 2: kind of be related. We'll just call them cousins kissing cousins.
Speaker 1: Even I saw step sibling, but I like cousin better.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, either one works.
Speaker 1: Frankly, I fall into this trap a lot because not generally,
Speaker 1: when I'm researching for our show, I tend to focus
Speaker 1: pretty well, except for maybe email because of that stupidding
Speaker 1: comes through on my computer, which I need to shut
Speaker 1: Down'll get to actually, we can talk about it now.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you very much should do
Speaker 1: if you have a problem with this kind of distraction
Speaker 1: is is getting those notifications turned off on your phone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't like they annoy me, so I've always had
Speaker 1: my phone ringer off and I get zero notifications just
Speaker 1: because it bugs me. But especially if you have issues
Speaker 1: trying to focus, like don't get notified when someone comments
Speaker 1: on your Instagram post or whatever. There's notifications for everything.
Speaker 2: It seems like, yeah, no, for sure, that's like one
Speaker 2: of the first best steps you can do is start
Speaker 2: turning off notifications, turning your ringer off when you're trying
Speaker 2: to concentrate, like just really basic stuff that people are like, no,
Speaker 2: thank you, I'd rather suffer in every way, shape and form.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But where I was going with that is I'm
Speaker 1: pretty good when I'm doing this job, but when I
Speaker 1: just when we have one of our non research or
Speaker 1: recording days and it's sort of I call them admin
Speaker 1: when we're just doing all the other stuff that goes
Speaker 1: along with the job, I really bounce around on those
Speaker 1: days between tasks.
Speaker 2: For me the like I can pay attention generally while
Speaker 2: I'm researching the difficulty or the challenges I run into.
Speaker 2: Remember that article from maybe The Atlantic in two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine by Nicholas Carr is Google making us stupid?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, where he talks about we don't read
Speaker 2: deeply any longer, we're just superficial readers. I can fall
Speaker 2: into that a lot, Like I have to force myself
Speaker 2: to not just get the information I'm looking for from
Speaker 2: an article, but to ingest it because there's always more
Speaker 2: stuff that ties into other parts of whatever topic we're
Speaker 2: researching in that article, and I but so rather than
Speaker 2: just going in harvesting what I'm looking for and then
Speaker 2: moving on or going in reading until I find something
Speaker 2: I need to go look up because I don't know
Speaker 2: what they're talking about, so open another tab and then
Speaker 2: I just move on the line like that. If I
Speaker 2: can just take the time to ingest like each article,
Speaker 2: I get so much more out of it than I
Speaker 2: do when I'm just kind of reading superficially from tab
Speaker 2: to tab.
Speaker 1: How do you read for pleasure? Is that easier for you?
Speaker 2: I forced myself to relearn how to read for pleasure
Speaker 2: because I realized, like I was reading nothing but nonfiction
Speaker 2: and it was always for work all the time. And
Speaker 2: so I started reading short horror fiction again, ex buying
Speaker 2: anthologies of horror fiction. And it's been a great, huge,
Speaker 2: wonderful like change in my life because I forgot how
Speaker 2: much I like reading fiction again.
Speaker 1: Same here, man, I'm reading a novel for the first
Speaker 1: time in a long time. Wow, And I used to
Speaker 1: be nothing, but I used to be in b N
Speaker 1: oh yeah, nothing but novels. And then went through a
Speaker 1: She's twelve year period where it was n BM almost
Speaker 1: nothing but memoir well and autobiographies and biographies. But now
Speaker 1: I'm reading a novel again and I'm just having so
Speaker 1: much fun. I was like, oh man, I used to
Speaker 1: love this, and I'm glad I'm getting back into it
Speaker 1: well and I can focus. Like we have family reading
Speaker 1: time because you know, we're encouraging Ruby just to read
Speaker 1: more for pleasure on our own, so the whole it's
Speaker 1: hard to say, like, hey, go read and I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna sit here and scroll on Instagram. So we have
Speaker 1: our like our family reading times. We're like thirty minutes
Speaker 1: every night. We all sit in the same room and
Speaker 1: read our book together, which is really good.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fun, very nice.
Speaker 2: I think that's a great place for a break. We
Speaker 2: can let everybody just sit there and think about the
Speaker 2: wholesomeness of the scene you just described. That's right, Okay,
Speaker 2: we'll be right back. So I don't know if you
Speaker 2: picked up on it yet, everybody, but there are there's
Speaker 2: some low quality studies and even lower quality reporting when
Speaker 2: it comes to something like multitasking. It's a bit of
Speaker 2: a wild West still as far as our understanding of
Speaker 2: what the brain's doing and why we can't do it
Speaker 2: very well. We've got a general idea. I think we've
Speaker 2: kind of gotten that across. But there's enough like leeway
Speaker 2: that people can come along with stupid, stupid studies and
Speaker 2: the media will report on it breathlessly and it'll turn
Speaker 2: out to just be not really right at all when
Speaker 2: you dive into the study.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think a lot of those, at least
Speaker 1: in terms of this research, I thought came down to, well,
Speaker 1: who's better at this? Men or women?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is that what you were thinking?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a huge part of it for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they've done all kinds of studies of worse
Speaker 1: because you know, what better time to pour money into
Speaker 1: research than to pit men and women versus one another
Speaker 1: and a challenge and a competition of multitasking and task switching.
Speaker 1: And there have been a lot of studies that do
Speaker 1: show some differences. A lot of them have been very inconsistent.
Speaker 1: A lot of the studies haven't been great. There have
Speaker 1: been studies that say that, like, men are better at this,
Speaker 1: there have been studies say that women are better at this.
Speaker 1: So I don't even know what to think.
Speaker 2: I think the answer is we don't really know yet. Probably,
Speaker 2: so yeah, Yeah, there hasn't been like a really good
Speaker 2: study or series of studies on it. I also don't
Speaker 2: think it matters, but who knows. If we're on a
Speaker 2: quest to understand everything, including ourselves, and maybe it is
Speaker 2: worth investigating the problem with the studies that have been
Speaker 2: done so far as they jump to massive conclusions based
Speaker 2: on really poor data. Sometimes there was this one that
Speaker 2: the media was like, this guy did it proved it
Speaker 2: women are better at multitasking than men, And when you
Speaker 2: read into it, you find that the response time of
Speaker 2: women was about sixty nine percent compared to seventy seven
Speaker 2: percent of men. So men had an eight percent slower
Speaker 2: response time at a multitasking task. And then, to put
Speaker 2: the icing on the cake, they were worse at a
Speaker 2: key a lost key task. And get this, this is
Speaker 2: the lost key task. You take a blank piece of
Speaker 2: paper and you show the researcher how you would go
Speaker 2: find a key, imagining the blank piece of paper as
Speaker 2: a field and the keys in there somewhere. It's one
Speaker 2: of the most objectively interpreted tests I've ever heard of
Speaker 2: in my life, and men were apparently not as good
Speaker 2: at it, or drew fewer lines than women did. Hence
Speaker 2: further supporting the idea that the women were better at
Speaker 2: multitasking than men because they could find a key in
Speaker 2: a field better. Imaginarily speaking, is it is it like
Speaker 2: a maze? No, it's a blank piece of paper, and
Speaker 2: you show how you would cross this field to look
Speaker 2: everywhere for the key. I saw an example.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, okay, an example.
Speaker 2: I'll get. It's just a series of lines back and
Speaker 2: forth crossing the entire paper. Okay. For some reason, a
Speaker 2: man who had completely taken leave of his senses made
Speaker 2: a circle design like a swirl, starting from the inside out,
Speaker 2: and then like missed some owners of the paper. So
Speaker 2: clearly women are better at multitaskingmment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is very interesting and so subjective. You're right,
Speaker 1: because like, I don't know, I feel like if you've
Speaker 1: got one hundred people, there would be one hundred different scribbles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And then who are you the researcher to
Speaker 2: be like, that's a pretty good strategy for finding a key,
Speaker 2: you pass.
Speaker 1: I have seen studies. There was one from pen Medicine
Speaker 1: that found that men on average or are better at
Speaker 1: performing and learning a single task, whereas women are better
Speaker 1: with their memory to have a better memory and better
Speaker 1: social cognition skills that suggest that they may be like
Speaker 1: more apt to be better at multitasking.
Speaker 2: So that's another study that you can poke a bunch
Speaker 2: of holes in. The study didn't do anything with multitasking.
Speaker 2: It was a brain imaging study that looked at the
Speaker 2: connectome how the brains of men and women are connected,
Speaker 2: and found some differences in the directions of the connections.
Speaker 2: Men had more connections from front to rear and rear
Speaker 2: to front. Women had more connections from left to right hemisphere.
Speaker 2: And that's it. That's what that's what it found. And
Speaker 2: for some reason, in the pressure releases in the in
Speaker 2: what the media picked up, that was immediately translated and
Speaker 2: extrapolated into women being better at memory and social cognition
Speaker 2: and men are better at navigating directions. That's what I'm
Speaker 2: talking about. Like you, Yeah, Like I feel like this
Speaker 2: has devolved into a like, be careful what you read
Speaker 2: kind of lesson, But that's always a good lesson to include.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as far as media goes, you know, we talked
Speaker 1: a lot about smartphones and stuff like that. It's sort
Speaker 1: of a different deal these days because in the old days,
Speaker 1: there would usually be a media. It's called an exchange
Speaker 1: of media. So, uh, you know, TV comes along and
Speaker 1: replaces radio, something might replace print. New equipment replaces the
Speaker 1: old equipment. But now things are technology has moved such
Speaker 1: that things are being stacked admin to the Internet and
Speaker 1: smartphones and TV and gaming and texting and emailing like,
Speaker 1: things have stacked upon one another such that they've done
Speaker 1: studies where they found in the late nineties about sixteen
Speaker 1: percent of time media time was concurrent or combined basically,
Speaker 1: and in two I've tried to get something a little
Speaker 1: more up to date than this, but just six years later,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, that went up to twenty
Speaker 1: six percent of media being used together. And I guarantee
Speaker 1: you that number is way way bigger now.
Speaker 2: So the most recent I could find was in twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: and it was up to thirty percent. I mean, think
Speaker 2: about the difference between what technology you have in your
Speaker 2: house in twenty twenty four and what you had in
Speaker 2: twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember our old buddy Luke Ryan. Remember Luke, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he was working in he's like an executive in
Speaker 1: TV and film and stuff, And I remember this is
Speaker 1: very early on where he talked about the multi screen
Speaker 1: experience and that they were all searching, you know, how
Speaker 1: to crack that, and I was like, what do you mean.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, like if you're looking at your
Speaker 1: iPad while you watch TV. And it was so early
Speaker 1: in that technology that I was like, what, Like, that's
Speaker 1: so weird, right, And now I just feel like even
Speaker 1: I fall into the trap, even when I'm watching things
Speaker 1: I like of being distracted by my phone, yeah, which
Speaker 1: I hate doing. I really try to make an effort
Speaker 1: if it's not just some throw a dumb thing I'm watching,
Speaker 1: to really like all right, pretend like I'm in a
Speaker 1: movie theater and like put that thing away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But it does take effort, doesn't It takes conscious effort.
Speaker 1: It does.
Speaker 2: So one of the weird things about media multitasking was
Speaker 2: what that's called when you have multiple screens that you're
Speaker 2: looking at at the same time, getting multiple inputs makes
Speaker 2: you dumber. Well, there's no study that shows that necessarily.
Speaker 2: There has been a study that it's related to a
Speaker 2: lower density of gray matter in the back of your brain,
Speaker 2: but that hasn't necessarily been shown to be a bad thing.
Speaker 2: And is that like the result of it we don't know.
Speaker 2: I think the thing that interested me about it is
Speaker 2: that there's a group of people who were accidentally discovered
Speaker 2: in just a few years back from some University of
Speaker 2: Utah researchers that are they're considered super taskers. To where
Speaker 2: they were they were part of a study of just
Speaker 2: finding out like differences in multitasking and cost switching, just
Speaker 2: a general study on multitasking, and they accidentally discovered the small,
Speaker 2: small group of people who there was no effect on
Speaker 2: performance when they were when they were doing like performing multitasking,
Speaker 2: like they were just as good doing it at the
Speaker 2: same time as they would have been doing it sequentially.
Speaker 2: And this one article I read about it, they were
Speaker 2: they were kind of positing, like, you know, why is
Speaker 2: this such a small population. I think they found like
Speaker 2: two and a half percent out of four hundred people,
Speaker 2: just a handful. Do the math yourself, because I'm done.
Speaker 2: We're super taskers. And they were wondering if, like there's
Speaker 2: such a small population because it's a newly developing trait
Speaker 2: among friends that.
Speaker 1: Like a new benefit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like because we're doing things like exposing ourselves to
Speaker 2: so many different inputs of information at once, some of
Speaker 2: us are getting better at it sooner than others, and
Speaker 2: that maybe we'll all be super taskers in one hundred
Speaker 2: or two hundred years or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: I think I thought so too.
Speaker 1: So, you know, to finish up earlier, we said, obviously
Speaker 1: to turn off those notifications and things like that, as
Speaker 1: far as like how to focus more on how to
Speaker 1: get a little bit better at this try and you know,
Speaker 1: turn off the email, certainly, turn off social media and
Speaker 1: things like that. If you have to sit down and
Speaker 1: accomplish like a well, not even at the computer, if
Speaker 1: you want to sit down and read a book or
Speaker 1: do anything and you're getting notifications that can redirect you.
Speaker 1: There is a method that you found called the Pomodoro
Speaker 1: technique created by Francisco Serelo, And basically there are these
Speaker 1: Pomodoro's timer but you can you can find them online
Speaker 1: if you want. They're very kind of clean and simple.
Speaker 1: But you decide at a task, you set your little
Speaker 1: timer for twenty five minutes, and you work on that
Speaker 1: task until the little timer goes off. You record a
Speaker 1: little X there and take a break for five minutes
Speaker 1: and then go back to your work. And then every
Speaker 1: time you have four of those, so twenty five times four,
Speaker 1: howevery minutes?
Speaker 2: That is well plus can you take it two?
Speaker 1: Well yeah, plus the breaks then you take a longer break,
Speaker 1: You take a ten minute break before you go back.
Speaker 1: And apparently it's a pretty good technique.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So during that time, like all your emails off,
Speaker 2: all your notifications are off, your ringers are off during
Speaker 2: that twenty five minute period, your heads down focusing on
Speaker 2: that task. Yeah, you're end of time management stuff.
Speaker 1: That's a good way to go totally. But some people
Speaker 1: are like, no, it cares. I love being distracted with
Speaker 1: all that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yep. Those are women because they're better super taskers than men.
Speaker 1: Apparently that sounds like it.
Speaker 2: If you want to know more about multitask king, then
Speaker 2: you can go read all about it on the internet
Speaker 2: and see what you think of the quality of studies
Speaker 2: that have been produced on it so far. Maybe you'll agree,
Speaker 2: maybe you won't. That's okay, because we're all people. And
Speaker 2: since I said that baffling thing, it's time for listener man.
Speaker 1: That's right, this pretty delightful email. Sometimes when we talk
Speaker 1: about stuff, we hear from actual people that were involved
Speaker 1: in that stuff. OHI just great. Yeah, and this one
Speaker 1: was an actual student of the Spruce Elementary School in
Speaker 1: San Francisco that was a part of that pioneering program
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties that we talked about in the
Speaker 1: Pigmalion Show. So hey guys, I'm a sixty six year
Speaker 1: old man, retired elementary music teacher from California City councilman
Speaker 1: in Syriana, Italy, and an alum of Spruce Elementary School
Speaker 1: in South San Francisco. My husband and I usually fall
Speaker 1: asleep to your show and replay the show in the
Speaker 1: morning catch what we missed. When the Sandman arrived. Last night,
Speaker 1: I was on the brink of slumber and I heard
Speaker 1: Spruce School. I woke my storing partner and made him
Speaker 1: replay the podcast from the beginning, and needless to say,
Speaker 1: I was wide awake the entire show and stayed up
Speaker 1: late into the night in the morning hours scouring the
Speaker 1: internet for Pigmilion in the classroom. I was flabbergasted, to
Speaker 1: say the least, to learn that I was part of
Speaker 1: that experiment. Also surprised to learn doctor Leonora Jacobson is
Speaker 1: still with us at one hundred and one years old.
Speaker 1: I entered the Spruce School as a kindergartener in the
Speaker 1: fall of nineteen sixty two, the same year actually midyear
Speaker 1: when doctor Lenora and Jacobson became principal. Doctor Jacobson left
Speaker 1: after my fifth grade year in sixty eight. I had
Speaker 1: his reeling at this point, guys, I've ordered the book,
Speaker 1: the first edition coming from the UK. I made a
Speaker 1: mental list of my classmates who I'm going to send
Speaker 1: to your podcast. I remember the testing. We thought they
Speaker 1: were fun. Actually, I was a bit of a class
Speaker 1: clown and always one of my teacher's pets. My memory
Speaker 1: has always been sharp and can remember several personal interactions
Speaker 1: with doctor Jacobson in her office. You boys have given
Speaker 1: me a wonderful assignment as I tripped down memory lane.
Speaker 1: And that is from the city Councilman of Siriana, Italy,
Speaker 1: none other than Bob Giorsi.
Speaker 2: Very nice, Bob, I'd love that email. Like just he
Speaker 2: didn't realize what he'd been through until he heard the podcast.
Speaker 2: It's just nuts to me.
Speaker 1: I love it, amazing great to hear from you, Bob.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, Bob. And if you want to be
Speaker 2: like Bob and just knock our socks off, give it
Speaker 2: a shot. Do it via email, though, wrap it up,
Speaker 2: spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
Speaker 2: stuff podcast did iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 2: is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.