In dieser Folge beschäftigen wir uns damit warum Multitasking uns nicht gut tut und warum wir damit aufhören sollten, es für eine tolle Fähigkeit zu halten.
Zum Nachlesen Englisch:
The Myth of Multitasking
The term multitasking is an Anglicism of the finest kind. It refers to the (attempt at) performance of multiple processes simultaneously, which can be summed up as 'multiple process execution' and 'multiple task performance'. When I hear the terms 'multiple process execution' and 'multiple task performance', I immediately feel much less like adding them to my inventory of skills. I know many women who are incredibly proud to declare that they can multitask, and even many men boast that they possess this ability as well. As proud as we may be of this, it is bad for our physical and mental health. A computer, with the right operating system, can seemingly perform multiple tasks simultaneously. But appearances are deceiving. The various processes are always activated alternately at such short intervals that only the impression of simultaneity is created. Real concurrent execution of several tasks can only be achieved if the computer has several CPU cores. But who of us has several brains? So we use the lulls that occur when, for example, the coffee that we have just put on slowly and leisurely flows through the machine to quickly put away the dishwasher and at the same time make the long overdue phone call to our parents, and at the same time we are probably thinking about what has to be done right afterwards.
We don't give our brains and bodies a chance to rest and properly process what we've done. So we simply ignore the incredible beauty of the moment when the coffee drips almost contemplatively into the pot, a smell of freshly ground beans fills the room, and the quiet gurgle as well as the roar of the machine can certainly have a meditative effect. The call for mindfulness is great, but the pride in multi-process execution / multi-task performance is much greater. And again I have to smile inwardly when I think about these words. Surely one could accomplish one or two additional tasks during the day. You would need only the appropriate book, a suitable guide, a faster cell phone and - if you abstained from your beloved carbohydrates - you would still look great. So why don't we just optimize everything? No, just think about when you're on the road. Talking on the phone while driving? An absolute no-go! Much too dangerous, because in order to get multiple things done at the same time, we have to divide up the resources of our brain. With a computer, that's when we get totally impatient for the screen to stop displaying those three bobbing dots. Yes, that's right, everything suddenly takes much longer. It slows down, and so do we. Stopping in time at a red light with a phone to your ear? That is most often a challenging task at best.
Now many are probably wondering: "Then how do I accomplish all these tasks?" And that's where we end up again with - that's right - inner peace. We multitask to keep the outer peace, put ourselves in a hamster wheel, make ourselves run incessantly so that we don't run out of energy and are not willing to allow ourselves even a small break. We disturb our inner peace enormously. If my best friend did this to me, we would probably not be friends anymore. So we should set priorities and allocate a value to our tasks. In doing so, we should attach much greater importance to our friendship with ourselves than we have in the past, so that we will still be happy and healthy in life next week, next month and next year. Because once our inner friend has starved, become emaciated, collapsed and perished in the hamster wheel, we too shall die!
Übersetzung: David Allen Martin II
Zum Nachlesen Deutsch:
Von der Mär vom Multitasking
Der Begriff Multitasking ist ein Anglizismus der feinsten Sorte. Es bedeutet nämlich ins Deutsche übersetzt Mehrprozessbetrieb oder Mehrfachaufgabenperformanz. Wenn ich mir diese Begriffe so anhöre ‘Mehrfachprozessbetrieb’ und ‘Mehrfachaufgabenperformanz’ habe ich gleich viel weniger Lust darauf es in meinen Leistungskatalog von Fähigkeiten mit aufzunehmen. Ich kenne viele Frauen, die unglaublich stolz erklären, sie seien multitaskingfähig. Und sogar viele Männer rühmen sich