A06 • Friday, February 1, 2013 • Burnaby NOW
The Burnaby NOW is a Canadian-owned community newspaper published and distributed in the city of Burnaby every Wednesday and Friday by the Burnaby Now, 201A – 3430 Brighton Avenue, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 3H4, a division of Glacier Media Group.
Brad Alden den Publisherr
Multi-tasking: not worth the trouble after all
ringing and chirping made us feel we Multi-tasking – when did it become had to respond – now? something to strive for? There’s no denying multi-tasking Was it when we all decided we were has become a badge of honour for so busy we had to do multiple things at some, but a new study shows once? people who rely on it may be Was it when the economic Burnaby NOW wasting their time. downturn led to staff cuts at According to a team from workplaces and we figured we the University of Utah, which tested could do the jobs of a few extra people 310 volunteers to measure their actual if we did a bit of this and a bit of that, multi-tasking ability against their all at the same time? imagined ability, multi-taskers are terWas it when electronic gadgets rible at multi-tasking. began proliferating and all of their
OUR VIEW
“The people who are most likely to multi-task harbour the illusion they are better than average at it, when in fact they are often worse,” said Prof. David Strayer, senior author of the study. “If you have people multi-tasking a lot, you might come to the conclusion that they are good at multi-tasking. In fact, the more likely they are to do it, the more likely they are to be bad at it.” The researchers found people end up juggling activities because they are easily distracted, not because they are
good at it. Ironically, they found the most efficient multi-taskers were the ones least likely to do it: people who can actually focus on one thing at a time. One particularly interesting conclusion of the study, published in the Public Library of Science? People who talk on cellphones while driving tend to be least able to multitask well. But if you’ve driven behind one of them, you already knew that.
Let’s educate kids on business M
put enough emphasis on starting y mother’s latest tria business as a career option. umph with my three Spending time on business kids was to suggest they “play business” in response education would be a great service to our kids and our country. to their moans of “I’m bored.” Running a business is a rewardShe set them up with some ing career choice. monopoly money, and they Consider that 83 per found things to sell. cent of business owners My eight-year-old would choose the same son had found some Laura Jones career path again, and boxes for packaging, 78 per cent would encourage and my three-year-old began trying to buy everything in sight. young people to go into business. Two hours later, they were In today’s economy, it makes still engrossed in pricing products and setting up shops to look sense to get kids thinking about all of their options. their best. More broadly, entrepreneurial My mother’s triumph got me societies are innovative, successthinking about a serious chalful societies, creating jobs and lenge we face in this country. opportunity. With two-thirds of Canada’s When two-thirds of cursmall-business owners planning rent business owners who are to exit their businesses over the responsible for close to half of next 10 years, the country needs private-sector jobs plan to retire to boost production of what is, in the next decade, it underperhaps, our most important scores the importance of nurturnatural resource: entrepreneurs. ing business as a viable option. Is our education system up to Where will that new crop of the task? business leaders come from? My kids come home from Some of today’s businesses school having learned all kinds will be passed on within the of exciting things, but the family. CFIB research shows that importance of business isn’t one 37 per cent of business owners of them. plan to follow this route, and I am not alone in thinking these young people have their that the education system could parents as entrepreneurial moddo a much better job of profiling els. business. Doesn’t it make sense for In a recent poll done by other potential owners to be the Canadian Federation of exposed to business as a career Independent Business, only 21 per cent of small-business Biz Page 7 owners said Canadian schools
IN MY OPINION
PUBLISHER Brad Alden EDITOR Pat Tracy ASSISTANT EDITOR Julie MacLellan SPORTS EDITOR Tom Berridge REPORTERS Janaya Fuller-Evans, Christina Myers, Jennifer Moreau PHOTOGRAPHER Larry Wright DIRECTOR, SALES AND MARKETING Lara Graham ADVERTISING REPS Cynthia Hendrix, Cam Northcott, Veronica Wong, Jennifer Kastelein AD CONTROL Ken Wall
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Coordination is essential
Dear Editor:
Re: Costs concern mayor, Burnaby NOW, Jan. 25. The mayors, the police chief of Delta and Coun. Nick Volkow raise several good points against a regional police force: that existing regional units are already costly, that the majority of the funds will slide to the larger cities, that there is already an accountability problem and that community-based policing will not be done well by a regional body. They have forgotten one major issue – that a truly unified police force would offer one-stop shopping for someone seeking to corrupt the police. With over a dozen different police forces it is virtually impossible to corrupt them all at the same time.
PRODUCTION MANAGER Doug McMaster PRODUCTION STAFF Ron Beamish, Kevin Behnsen, Lynne Boucher, Nola Bowling, Rona Eastman-Magee, Laura Powell, Tony Sherman GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Helen-Louise Kinton, Gary E. Slavin REGIONAL CLASSIFIED MANAGER Trixi Agrios CLASSIFIED SUPERVISOR Dawn James CLASSIFIED REPS Darla Burns, John Taylor, ACCOUNTING Judy Sharp
With a single administration they would only have to corrupt a single high-level official, and they would have a handle on the whole region. And if they couldn’t get to a high official, they could aim for any number of lower-level employees. With separate offices, one office watches the other. However, as the Missing Women Commission suggests, some issues need regional coordination. A regional office of the RCMP might be the answer. After all, they are Canada’s federal police, and many of the regional issues are really national problems. But Coun. Volkow points out that there is already an accountability problem. This in itself would be reason to reject such a model until the accountability issues are dealt with.
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