Multitasking Quotes

I've learnt that, sometimes, how others see you is not the same as how you see yourself. I've learnt about how you can be multitasking - and sometimes other people see that you're multitasking. And that's not very nice for them. ~ David Miliband

Multitasking makes you stupid - dumber than getting stoned. ~ Brigid Schulte

Then there are the metabolic costs of switching itself that I wrote about earlier. Asking the brain to shift attention from one activity to another causes the prefrontal cortex and striatum to burn up oxygenated glucose, the same fuel they need to stay on task. And the kind of rapid, continual shifting we do with multitasking causes the brain to burn through fuel so quickly that we feel exhausted and disoriented after even a short time. We've literally depleted the nutrients in our brain. This leads to compromises in both cognitive and physical performance. Among other things, repeated task switching leads to anxiety, which raises levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the brain, which in turn can lead to aggressive and impulsive behaviors. By contrast, staying on task is controlled by the anterior cingulate and the striatum, and once we engage the central executive mode, staying in that state uses less energy than multitasking and actually reduces the brain's need for glucose. ~ Daniel J. Levitin

Focus on one thing at a time whenever possible. You might think of an organized person as juggling many things at once, but actually it's been proven more efficient to handle things one at a time. A recent Wall Street Journal article discussed how managing two important mental tasks at once reduces the brainpower available for either task. So, while people think they are saving time by multitasking, they are actually doing both tasks ineffectively. ~ Lorie Marrero

There are certain things you learn to do as a parent - using every single part of your body because you're multitasking all the time. You're holding the baby and you're closing the door with your left foot. ~ Amy Ryan

I'm a technophobe. I can't crack the iPhone, and the extent of my multitasking is being able to talk while I make a drink. ~ Len Goodman

Many people feel they must multi-task because everybody else is multitasking, but this is partly because they are all interrupting each other so much. ~ Marilyn Vos Savant

When Suzie introduced Helen, she told the audience that one of the best things about books is that they are an interactive art form: that while the author may describe in some detail how a character looks, it is the reader's imagination that completes the image, making it his or her own. "That's why we so often don't like movies made from books, right?" Suzie said. "We don't like someone else's interpretation of what we see so clearly." She talked, too, about how books educate and inspire, and how they soothe the soul-"like comfort food without the calories," she said. She talked about the tactile joys of reading, the feel of a page beneath one's fingers; the elegance of typeface on a page. She talked about how people complain that they don't have time to read, and reminded them that if they gave up half an hour of television a day in favor of reading, they could finish twenty-five books a year. "Books don't take time away from us," she said. "They give it back. In this age of abstraction, of multitasking, of speed for speed's sake, they reintroduce us to the elegance-and the relief!-of real, tick-tock time. ~ Elizabeth Berg

As for time, it is forever shrinking. Oppressed by multitasking and managerial efficiency, we live under a perpetual time pressure. The disease of this millennium will be called chronophobia or speedomania, and its treatment will be embarrassingly old-fashioned. Contemporary nostalgia is not so much about the past as about vanishing the present. ~ Svetlana Boym

If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke. ~ Clay Shirky

When we think we're multitasking we're actually multiswitching. That is what the brain is very good at doing - quickly diverting its attention from one place to the next. We think we're being productive. We are, indeed, being busy. But in reality we're simply giving ourselves extra work. ~ Michael Harris

Multitasking? I can't even do two things at once. I can't even do one thing at once. ~ Helena Bonham Carter

My mother was a pediatrician, and she kept busy hours. I learned from her you could pack a lot into the day. Every minute had to count, and multitasking was a given. ~ Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

If you ever want to understand multitasking in prose, James Joyce is your man. ~ Frank Delaney

Sorry I disagree,' she said while initialing some papers, having already acquired the mogul's knack of compounding an insult by multitasking while delivering it. ~ Joe Keenan

I'm going to continue working as a model. I want to do it all! And I think it's possible to keep working while you go to school. Christy Turlington did it. Natalie Portman did it. Emma Watson just did it! And those are just women in the public eye, but plenty of others do it, too. You know, women around the world are great at multitasking. We do it well. ~ Karlie Kloss

I have the attention span of a mosquito from multitasking and all the things that have affected my poor little brain. ~ Ian Somerhalder

It is pure mythology that women cannot perform as well as men in science, engineering and mathematics. In my experience, the opposite is true: Women are often more adept and patient at untangling complex problems, multitasking, seeing the possibilities in new solutions and winning team support for collaborative action. ~ Weili Dai

The secret to multitasking is that it isn't actually multitasking. It's just extreme focus and organization. ~ Joss Whedon

Keeping it all together as a modern woman means multitasking, especially when you work. I think you always need to try your best, but at the same time you can only do what you can do, and you don't need to beat yourself up about it. I'm not white-picket-fence perfect. ~ Heidi Klum

The worst possible thing you can do when you're down in the dumps, tweaking, vaporous with victimized self-righteousness, or bored, is to take a walk with dying friends. They will ruin everything for you. First of all, friends like this may not even think of themselves as dying, although they clearly are, according to recent scans and gentle doctors' reports. But no, they see themselves as fully alive. They are living and doing as much as they can, as well as they can, for as long as they can. They ruin your multitasking high, the bath of agitation, rumination, and judgment you wallow in, without the decency to come out and just say anything. They bust you by being grateful for the day, while you are obsessed with how thin your lashes have become and how wide your bottom. ~ Anne Lamott

The irony of multitasking is that it's exhausting: when you're doing two or three things simultaneously, you use more energy than the sum of energy required to do each task independently. You're also cheating yourself because your're not doing anything excellently. You're compromising your virtuosity. In the words of T. S. Elliot, you're 'distracted from distractions by distractions'. ~ Twyla Tharp

The simple act of being interrupted is one of the biggest barriers to productivity ... What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent. ~ Susan Cain

Women are smarter by basic instinct and by what we have to do to multitask at home and at work. My mother did that 50 years ago, but it wasn't called multitasking or stress back then. She had a job, two kids and the meals to make with no cook or maid. My father would come home every day and expect lunch. He was a nice guy, but he was clueless! ~ Mireille Guiliano

Another study, of 38,000 knowledge workers across different sectors, found that the simple act of being interrupted is one of the biggest barriers to productivity. Even multitasking, that prized feat of modern-day office warriors, turns out to be a myth. ~ Susan Cain

How often have you heard people brag about what great multi-taskers they are? Perhaps you've made the same boast yourself. You might even have heard that members of "Gen Y" are natural multi-taskers, having lived their whole lives constantly switching their attention from texting to IMing to Facebooking to watching TV - all supposedly without missing a beat. We even see training classes designed to teach managers how best to multi-task their Gen Y staff, the implication being that asking someone to focus on a single task through to completion has now become ridiculously old-fashioned for, if not downright heretical to, the new world order.

Don't believe it. ~ Michael Hannan

Over time, stress hormones from multitasking can damage memory centers in the brain. Focus on one task at a time for better efficiency and memory. ~ Peter Lawrence

The sooner we associate long hours and multitasking with incompetence and carelessness the better. The next time you hear boasts of executives pulling an all-nighter or holding conference calls in their cars, be sure to offer your condolences; it's grim being stuck in sweatshops run by managers too ignorant to understand productivity and risk. Working people like this is as smart as running your factory without maintenance. In manufacturing and engineering businesses, everyone learns that the top priority is asset integrity: protecting the machinery on which the business depends. In knowledge-based economies, that machinery is the mind. ~ Margaret Heffernan

I do think to some extent multitasking is a way of fooling ourselves that we're being exceptionally efficient. ~ James Surowiecki

A strategy is multi-dimensional planning, multi-team collaboration, and multitasking action. ~ Pearl Zhu

Concentration Attention Multitasking Boredom Procrastination ~ Sharon Salzberg

Do three things well, not ten things badly. ~ David Segrove

Ptolemaic gods are awful,' I said. 'They're unpredictable, temperamental, dangerous, insecure -'
'Like a normal god, then,' Meg said.
'I hate you,' I said.
'I thought you loved me.'
'I'm multitasking. ~ Rick Riordan

Start with the important task first: Start the most important task first, as this will make you relaxed and avoid anxiety to jump into multitasking. ~ Dorothy Enderson

People say pot-smokers are lazy. I disagree; I'm a multitasking pot-smoker: just the other day I was walking down the street, I was putting eyedrops in my eyes, I was talking on my cell phone, and I was getting hit by a car. ~ Doug Benson

It is generally recognized that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multitasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics and physics. It is not politically correct to say such things ... But it cannot be denied that there are differences between men and women. Of course, these are differences between the averages only. There are wide variations about the mean. ~ Stephen Hawking

The problem is that the pressure to disprove a stereotype changes what you are about in a situation. It gives you an additional task. In addition to learning new skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking in a schooling situation, or in addition to trying to perform well in a workplace like the women in the high-tech firms, you are also trying to slay a ghost in the room, the negative stereotype and its allegation about you and your group. You are multitasking, and because the stakes involved are high--survival and success versus failure in an area that is important to you--this multitasking is stressful and distracting.

...And when you realize that this stressful experience is probably a chronic feature of the stetting for you, it can be difficult for you to stay in the setting, to sustain your motivation to succeed there. Disproving a stereotype is a Sisyphean task; something you have to do over and over again as long as your are in the domain where the stereotype applies. Jeff seemed to feel this way about Berkeley, that he couldn't find a place there where he could be seen as belonging. When men drop out of quantitative majors in college, it is usually because they have bad grades. But when women drop out of quantitative majors in college it usually has nothing to do with their grades. The culprit, in their case, is not their quantitative skills but, more likely, the prospect of living a significant portion of their lives in a domain where they may forever have t ~ Claude M. Steele

It's important to be aware of how multitasking can stimulate us into mindlessness, giving the illusion of productivity while stealing our focus and harming performance. "When you are walking, walk. When you are sitting, sit," is ancient wisdom. ~ Sharon Salzberg

Consider that the simplest social interactions between two people requires performing an astonishing array of tasks: interpreting what the other person is saying; reading body language and facial expressions; smoothly taking turns talking and listening; responding to what the other person said; assessing whether you're being understood; determining whether you're well received, and, if not, figuring out how to improve or remove yourself from the situation. Think of what it takes to juggle all this at once! And that's just a one-to-one conversation. Now imagine the multitasking required in a group setting like a dinner party.
(p237) ~ Susan Cain

I'm a person of whim, and easily distracted. I don't like multitasking. When I'm doing one thing, I like to do just that thing. ~ Margaret Atwood

Some days I don't have time for a full workout, but I do have to dry my hair, right? So rather than just stand there blow-drying, I do several kinds of leg squats at the same time. I believe in multitasking. ~ Christie Brinkley

Multi-tasking is great in the kitchen when you are trying to time the chicken to be ready at the same time as the potatoes. But do not assume it is a great way to manage a workday. ~ Joanne Tombrakos

Multilevel multitasking multiplied multiple times is Event Management. ~ Rehan Waris

Multitasking Makes You Stupid. Doing more than one thing at a time makes you slower and worse at both tasks. Don't do it. If you think this doesn't apply to you, you're wrong - it does. ~ Jeff Sutherland

The brain cannot multitask...The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time...This attentional ability is, to put it bluntly, not capable of multitasking. ~ John Medina

I like "multi-" ... multiplicity, multicultural, multiplication etc. Any contribution to diversification and value augmentation is achievement. ~ Rossana Condoleo

Instead of thinking about addiction, it makes sense to confront this reality: We are faced with technologies to which we are extremely vulnerable and we don't always respect that fact. The path forward is to learn more about our vulnerabilities. Then, we can design technology and the environments in which we use them with these insights in mind. For example, since we know that multitasking is seductive but not helpful to learning, it's up to us to promote unitasking. ~ Sherry Turkle

Inevitably we find ourselves tackling too many things at the same time, spreading our focus so thin that nothing gets the attention it deserves. This is commonly referred to as "being busy." Being busy, however, is not the same thing as being productive. ~ Ryder Carroll

I want to lengthen, not shorten, my attention span, and most of the material splendors of the twenty-first century bully me in the opposite direction. The fault is mine, I'll admit. I'm too slow-witted, reluctant to evolve, constitutionally unable to get with the program. I can't afford the newest gadgets and I'm not a natural multitasker. ~ Phillip Connors

Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time. ~ Gary Keller

Chinese cooking is noisy - a multitasking activity that requires constant vigilance. There is no downtime. ~ Jennifer Lee

Begging your pardon, but I'm not just a secretary. I seriously, seriously despised it when people called secretaries and administrative professionals just a secretary. Being a secretary was a multitasking marathon, a daily gauntlet of making everyone happy all the time. ~ Penny Reid

Multitasking divides your attention and leads to confusion and weakened focus. ~ Deepak Chopra

I'm like a circus standing on two legs. ~ Nuno Roque

Studies consistently show that the better people think they are at multitasking, the worse they actually are and I am GREAT at it. ~ John Green

Multitasking means that you are not able to make full, rich connections in your thinking, because the part of your brain that helps make connections is constantly being pulled away before neural connections can be firmed up. ~ Barbara Oakley

We often think that combining tasks will save us time, but scientific evidence shows that it has the opposite effect. Even those who claim to be good at multitasking are not very productive. In fact, they are some of the least productive people. Our brains can take million bits of information but can only actually process of few dozen per second. When we say we're multitasking, what we're really doing is switching back and forth between tasks very quickly. Unfortunately, we're not computers adept at parallel processing. We end up spending all our energy alternative between tasks, instead of focusing on doing one of them well. Concentrating on one thing at a time may be the single most important factor in achieving flow. ~ Hector Garcia Puigcerver

We miss extra bits of knowledge that can add value to our lives. We sort of lack empathy because we're multitasking all the time. ~ Kim Stolz

You'd think people would realize they're bad at multitasking and would quit. But a cognitive illusion sets in, fueled in part by a dopamine-adrenaline feedback loop, in which multitaskers think they are doing great. ~ Daniel J. Levitin

I did that thing where you scratch your eyebrow and flip someone off at the same time. I'm good at multitasking like that. ~ Darynda Jones

Varium et mutabile! murmurs the man sagely - "A woman's privilege is to change her mind!" If the nature of his industry were such that he had to change his mind from cooking to cleaning, from cleaning to sewing, from sewing to nursing, from nursing to teaching, and so, backward, forward, crosswise and over again, from morning to night - he too would become adept in the lightning-change act. The man adopts one business and follows it. He develops special ability, on long lines, in connection with wide interests - and so grows broader and steadier. The distinction is there, but it is not a distinction of sex. This is why the man forgets to mail the letter. He is used to one consecutive train of thought and action. She, used to a varying zigzag horde of little things, can readily accommodate a few more. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Multi-tasking is NOT an option ~ Mani S. Sivasubramanian

Wilson showed that the cognitive losses from multitasking are even greater than the cognitive losses from pot smoking. ~ Daniel J. Levitin

She was good at multitasking, and there was really only one way to keep Ian on task or he would go off on one of his arctic, curse-filled rants that tended to make everyone around him dive for cover. "Jesse Murdoch shot me." Ian grunted a little, his hips bucking slightly. "I knew there was a reason I liked the kid." She rolled her eyes. "Nice. ~ Lexi Blake

Most of the work on multitasking suggests that it generally makes you less efficient, not more. ~ James Surowiecki

I like to think of murder-suicide as extreme multitasking. ~ Dana Gould

The relative ease of most driving lures us into thinking we can get away with doing other things. Indeed, those other things, like listening to the radio, can help when driving itself is threatening to cause fatigue. But we buy into the myth of multitasking with little actual knowledge of how much we can really add in or, as with the television news, how much we are missing. As the inner life of the driver begins to come into focus, it is becoming clear not only that distraction is the single biggest problem on the road but that we have little concept of just how distracted we are. ~ Tom Vanderbilt

We are the generation capable of doing many things at once, without enjoying any of them.. ~ Dinesh Kumar Biran

marriage is an ultimate sport in emotional multitasking. I'm never only mad at Greg. I'm mad and madly in love; angry and concerned for his wellbeing; he frustrates and delights me in the same second. We were arguing, but we were still a team. ~ Penny Reid

My biggest thing is, I'm learning what it's like to carry myself in a personal way and also a professional way: how I can be a leader and do multitasking. ~ Genevieve Padalecki

A person who is interrupted while performing a task takes 50% more time to complete it and make 50% more errors. ~ David Brooks

Juggling is an illusion ... In reality, the balls are being independently caught and thrown in rapid succession ... It is actually task switching. ~ Gary Keller

Eliminate multitasking to learn faster and think better. ~ Jill Konrath

I think all of us are multitasking a little more today than we used to or than we would like to. And I think that the issue of work-life balance is a critical issue for every company around the world. ~ Irene Rosenfeld

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multitasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed - some mechanism or myth that encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where "the long term" is measured at least in centuries. ~ Stewart Brand

Jordan Grafman, head of the cognitive neuroscience unit at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, explains that the constant shifting of our attention when we're online may make our brains more nimble when it comes to multitasking, but improving our ability to multitask actually hampers our ability to think deeply and creatively. ~ Nicholas Carr

Multitasking doesn't save time - it wastes time. ~ Gary Keller

Multitasking is the drive to be more than we are, to control more than we do, to extend our power and our effectiveness. Such practice yields a divided self, with full attention given to nothing. ~ Walter Brueggemann

In this media-drenched, multitasking, always-on age, many of us have forgotten how to unplug and immerse ourselves completely in the moment. We have forgotten how to slow down. Not surprisingly, this fast-forward culture is taking a toll on everything from our diet and health to our work and the environment. ~ Carl Honore

I told you to keep him safe, not cuddle."
Alucard spread his hands behind him on the sheets. "I'm more than capable of multitasking ~ V.E Schwab

You can do two things at once, but you can't focus effectively on two things at once. ~ Gary Keller

The brain cannot multitask. Multitasking, when it comes to paying attention, is a myth. The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time ... To put it bluntly, research shows that we can't multitask. We are biologically incapable of processing information-rich inputs simultaneously ... Studies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50 percent more errors. ~ John Medina

Multitasking is a highly overrated thing if you ask me. Today, we do everything in twos and threes. There is no longer time to stand and gaze, to look and ponder and to let your mind harmlessly wander. Everything goes around at such a breakneck pace. I almost envy my grandparents. Their lives were mostly devoid of Televisions and completely Computer free! I cannot imagine what my life would be today without the internet – forget even the computer – but I'd love to know how it would feel. ~ Anirudh Arun

You will leave now," she said softly, " or I will drag you out of here by your hair."
The man had breath like a day-old tuna sandwich. "I hate dykes. You always think you're tougher than you really
"
Xhex grabbed the man's wrist, turned him in a little circle, and cranked him arm up to the middle of his back. Then she clipped her leg around his ankles and shoved him off balance. He landed like a side of beef, the wind getting knocked out of him on a curse, his body plowing into the short-napped carpet. In a quick move, she bent down, buried one hand in his gelled-up hair, and locked the other on the collar of his suit jacket. As she draggep him face-first to the side exit, she was multitasking : creating a scene, commiting both an assault and a battery, and running the risk of a brawl if his buddies in the Hall of Fucktards got involved. But you had to put on a show every once in a while. To keep the peace, you had to get your hands dirty every once in a while. ~ J.R. Ward