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4/ I'm convinced both academic and pop-wisdom takes on multitasking are deeply wrong. We're multi-tasking beings. Unit asking is unnatural
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5/ Why? Nature isn't like movie villains, sending mooks (disposable minions) at you 1 at a time in order. Reality comes at you multithreaded
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7/ Our brains are designed to be constantly scanning in wandering pattern (presumably for threats and opportunities). It's feature, not bug
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8/ I've seen research indicating that mind-wandering is at heart of creativity, play. Multitasking is less efficient, but is more creative
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9/ If you think about it environments that allow extended focus on one activity are unnatural and historically anomalous: the Industrial Age
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10/ But there's deeper phenomenon here: metacognition. Mind wandering makes us interrupt driven by design. Metacognition makes us good at it
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11/ The critical thing to understand is that a "task" or "thread" is not magically defined *for* us by psychologists or Charlie Munger
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12/ We are doing this *constantly*. We factor and refactor recursively all the way down. Defining "tasks" dynamically IS metacognition
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13/ Unless you're very lucky, the span of activities you have to constantly refactor to avoid getting stuck is quite large.
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15/ True, but entirely besides the point in most domains. Metacognition and high-level coding both give you higher level gains that are 10x
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16/ In summary: "multitasking is bad" is a mix of bad science, pastoral advice from lucky people in exceptional situations, poor semantics
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