Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime

This is an interview by Terry Gross of Fresh Air recently. (Listen, and read the transcript here). I have not heard of it, my wife 'encourages' to listen to me. (Why would I want to know?)

This interview was written by Mr. Matt Richtel, a technical journalist at New York Times. His latest column is "robbing the brain that needs to be shut down" (some of these ideas are explained in this interview)

Important problem - multitasking. His frank conclusion is as follows. Scientists are very obvious that you can not do more than one thing at a time.

This is ironic. I thought that running multitasking would work very well and I completed one or three prices for the time it takes to complete my task. Things But when doing these two or three jobs at the same time, how do scientists effectively learn these things?

Yes, this is another place I do not have to worry about. Scientists know very well that you can not do more than one thing at a time (I emphasized). Research dates back a few years ago, it welcomes its new applicability under the sun, its new applicability

Your brain effectively processes one stream at a time. I have heard about a very basic test that strongly insists on Stanford University scientists. This is a test of a cocktail party that the researcher knows over the years, if you are sitting at a cocktail party and you are listening to someone in front of you, actually listen to the person behind I can not do it.

Indeed, if someone else told you behind like your name, you might choose a very basic thing but apart from that, you deal with these two streams No.

Therefore, try to read the IM in the person sitting at the table, playing with the device, during a conversation with a superior or colleague while browsing the website, or by subordinate by phone. What you do basically is to switch them quickly instead of doing them at the same time.

According to all surveys, switching these tasks will greatly reduce the efficiency of each task.

"This technology makes the minimum time frame interesting and potentially productive, but scientists point to unexpected side effects: when people are busy with digital input they can do Scientists at the University of California San Francisco discovered that their brains are new when they have new experiences, such as exploring mice unfamiliar areas, etc. Active mode But mice are absent from their exploration For the first time, they deal with these patterns in a way that seems to produce empirical memories.

Science shows us the busy brain times over and over again, and we urgently need more downtime. "Downtime is essential for complementing the brain's attention and motivation, promoting productivity and creativity, achieving our highest level of performance, and creating stable memories in our daily lives." Sounds good. Mandy Menaker, a 26-year-old marketer living in Brooklyn, will soon be able to get rid of the benefits of living alone. They provide enough room for a crash. But she said that the best is not to apologize for the dog.

The need for mental work stoppage is well documented. A scientific American writes like this. The moment of interruption is a moral compass of human work instructions and maintains self-awareness.