BRUNSWICK SCHOOL
MARCH 2012
MONTHLY MAILING A MESSAGE FROM THE HEADMASTER Multi-Tasking Recent years have brought a new term into our lexicon: “multi-tasking.” In fact, the ability to “multi-task” effectively is often seen as a strength of good managers and valued employees. Last winter, however, I came across a speech that was presented to the Plebe Class at West Point by William Deresiewicz, a professor of English at Yale University, entitled “Solitude and Leadership.” The speech touches on a number of topics but, more than anything, I found his remarks regarding “multi-tasking” to be particularly interesting. He writes: “A study by a team of researchers at Stanford came out a couple of months ago. The investigators wanted to figure out how today’s college students were able to multi-task so much more effectively than adults. How do they manage it the researchers asked? The answer, they discovered – and this is by no means what they expected – is that they don’t. The enhanced cognitive abilities the investigators expected to find, the mental faculties that enable people to multitask effectively, were simply not there. In other words, people do not multi-task effectively. And here is the really surprising finding: the more people multi-task, the worse they are, not just at other mental abilities, but at multitasking itself.” He goes on to say: The study “. . . found in every case that (multi-taskers) were worse at distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information . . . were more distractible . . . were worse at what you might call ‘mental filing.’ In other words, their minds were more disorganized. And, they were even worse at the very thing that defines multi-tasking itself; switching between tasks.” His conclusion: “Multi-tasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it . . . you simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets . . . ” Perhaps, the ability to “multi-task” isn’t such a good thing after all. In fact, it seems that true knowledge and understanding does not come by flitting along the surface of things, but rather by delving into the depths of a subject without distraction or time constraints. There is little doubt in my mind that our boys, and their ability to learn, are severely challenged by the technological world in which they live. Anything we can do to turn off the distractions and slow the pace of their days will pay off in both the short and long run through their broader and deeper understanding of the world around them.