Posted on 08/23/2010 6:17:09 AM PDT by decimon
Britons are increasingly overlapping their media habits - tapping out e-mails while watching TV, reading a paper while answering texts from friends. But, asks Hugh Wilson, does media multi-tasking mean instead of doing a few things well, we are just doing more things badly?
I was watching a documentary the other day about an educational issue that - as the father of a child about to start his first year at school - held more than a passing interest.
At the same time, I was actively participating in a three-way text message conversation about the coming weekend.
It's fair to say that, by the end of the evening, I had only a vague understanding of the message of the documentary and the weekend remained largely unplanned. I had multi tasked, but I hadn't done it particularly well.
Still, I was only doing what comes naturally, at least if the latest report from media regulator Ofcom is to be believed.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
I believe texting and internet on phones are a huge distraction at work. I’m at work now so case in point.
Now certainly, most people are capable of working on a few things at a time, and indeed, many people will get bored, apathetic and complacent if they aren't being challenged, but the opposite extreme is when a person gets a pile of worked dumped on them, and then has no priorities set for them with regards to completion, they will end up being less productive than the person who only has one thing to do at a time.
My daughter was listening to her MP3 player, texting and talking on her cell phone while sitting in the Easy Chair. I said “Evelyn, dinner’s ready” three times. No response. So I switch the channel to get the score of the Boston College football game. She says “hey, I was watching that.”
At my job, we do almost all the work by text messaging. The problem is too many messages at once, and people texting when they should be paying attention in phone meetings.
On the other hand, you can just not reply for a while if you’re concentrating on something else.
So, maybe her span of attention is three on-going events. You now know how to interupt one of the data streams in order to get her attention. If she had not responded, then you would have known her maximum input level is either one or two. All of this is good information to have, and I am in no way slamming either of you. In fact, you have given me a new way to get my 15 year old’s attention without raising my voice - cut off one data input, smile, and then begin to communicate. Thanks.
When we got Blackberrys at a previous employer, they became known as “Crackberry’s” because using them in the middle of meetings became addictive. Head down meant “tuned out”.
Since our meetings are all phone meetings, nobody can see if you’re paying attention or not. You may have even dropped off and dialed in to a different meeting.
When I have two phone meetings at once, I sometimes dial into both and switch back and forth. I have some guy ping me if something comes up for me.
That’s why I prefer to text, even on my personal time. I don’t get tied up on the phone listening to nonsense. I can respond at my own convenience.
Commercial breaks are up to 6 minutes on some programs and add up to about 21 minutes per hour of programming.
I keep the laptop handy.
One can do a significant amount of web surf during that time.
I just watch tv shows on the internet - those 60 minute long shows are shaved down to 42.
When some talk show hosts say they offer three hours of talk, what they really should say is about half that. Hannity and many of the other big names only jabber for about thirty minutes or so per hour. The rest of the time is about ten minutes of news and twenty minutes of what seems neverending ads. Rush used to be the best offering about forty minutes of actual talk per hour, but now much of that time he's pitching Carbonite or something else and he's down to about thirtyfive minutes of actual issues talk. Whatever their strategy, when the ads come on, I either switch to another station or simply turn the radio off.
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