Untangling... the multi-tasking tangle

The health and wellness section of the Boston Globe posted another excellent article by Tara Ballenger on why the brain is not so good at handling the constant interruptions that multi-tasking generally entails.

Overworking your working memory does not actually work. In computer terms, you are just "thrashing." You run out of ram and have to write to disk, and then the disk space isn't big enough either, you just swap the bits back and forth in a futile way.

Or for those without a system admin background, it's like you are making toast, but you have to pick up the toaster to put down the loaf of bread, grab two slices between your knees, and then pick up the bread again to put the toaster down before hopping on one foot to get the toast into the toaster. It's just silly, and it takes forever, and by the time you've done all this, you are exhausted and the toast is well... toast.

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