Counseling Multitasking: A case study in relationships

There are two different kinds of people in the world. But then again you can probably say that about any topic that you want to analyze. Some people multitask and other people do task switching.

Those are two computer terms that applies very well to people as well. It makes a major difference. In order to understand how it applies to people, let’s understand it first with computers.

On a computer a computer can have the option you can have the option of working on your word processor and devote your time to that. After which you can close down your word processor and then you can go into your mail program and you can work on email for a while and then when you’re through with that you can close it down and you can go into your game.

A more advanced way of doing it which would also be task switching would be to start your game and then to leave your game in the middle but don’t get out of it and at the same time work on a letter in your word processor and then leave your letter open, don’t get out of it, and then to look at some of your email and then to switch from one to the other as you feel like it. All of these tasks are busy working in the background but you are only doing one at a time. That’s task switching. You’re switching from one to the other quite easily but only one thing is happening at a time.

However there’s another way to handle your affairs. With a computer you can turn on the computer and then you can let it start downloading several big programs at once. While it’s doing that you can also turn on your go into your word processor and you can prepare some letters and the computer is doing two things at once. It’s helping you work on your letter and it’s helping you receive the programs. This ability to do two things simultaneously is called multi-tasking and it makes things very efficient.

True, each task may not be done as efficiently as if it would have been the only task being worked on. However, the total time spent on both tasks is much much smaller than the time that would have been spent if the computer was first asked to download the game and when that was completed then the modem would have to be turned off and then you would have to start working on the letter. Multi-tasking does make things fare more efficient.

People are the same.