Multitasking is REAL - Ask ANY Musician | MUSIC is not a GENRE - Season 2 Episode #21

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Years ago I had a boss who told me multitasking is a myth. That it’s impossible for the brain to focus on or do more than one thing at a time. I took this in as I was mentally reviewing my work schedule for the day, rubbing my thigh casually, and chewing the inside of my lip.

It was the first time I’d heard anyone take this stance, but it was far from the last. More & more people started to express this opinion, usually telling me while walking down the street or eating or writing down something else. Sometimes I’d disagree. Sometimes I’d just nod my head. In both cases, what I really wanted to do was shout: Are you crazy?! Are you not observing yourself RIGHT NOW?! Or I wanted to take an understatedly strident tone and describe to them the last time I played a gig as a musician/vocalist.

There are two facets to this argument, and I’m going to refute both of them. Let’s do the second part first.

I don’t think there’s anyone who will disagree that PHYSICALLY it’s not only possible to multitask, we’re doing it all the time – literally with every breath we take. The body is capable of doing dozens of things at once, and in fact has to to survive. On a more practical level, let’s go back to the musician example. For most musicians, there are at least two appendages actively doing two different things – for drummers it can be all four. Add onto that singing, and someone can physically be doing five different things at once. Yes, they’re all in tandem & in the service of one objective, but this very clearly qualifies as multitasking.

I know that’s low hanging fruit. It’s the easy part of this refutation. I know that when people say it’s impossible to multitask, what they’re really saying is the brain can’t focus on more than one thing at a time. So let me dive into tearing this apart too.

Let’s make it hard. Let’s dismiss the fact that the brain is running the entire body and then some, which takes multitasking to a level possibly matched only by the most powerful supercomputers. Let’s only focus on the crux of this argument: that the brain CAN’T FOCUS ITS CONSCIOUS ATTENTION on more than one thing at a time. Within the wording of that is its own counterargument.

We still know so little about the brain compared to what’s left to discover. But one thing we do know is that its processes are layered. Which goes not just for autonomic processes, but voluntary processes as well, including and especially thought. While we’re talking about one thing, an under layer of our brain could be prepping the next comment, or thinking about something else entirely.

There’s a lot of science that says both brains and computers can’t actually multitask, that what’s going on is really a rapid-fire bouncing between focuses – in some cases so rapid-fire that it gives the illusion of multitasking. To that I say: so what?! There’s a point at which a thing and the illusion of that thing are close enough that the either/or DOES NOT MATTER. In my experience, whenever someone tries to define away the existence of multitasking, the caveats and qualifications add up so quickly that it obscures their original argument beyond significance.

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