I’ve never been much for listening to music while I do work. I’ve always found it distracting if not downright annoying. I don’t really believe I’m capable of multitasking. If a task requires my focus and coordination it will get the sum of it.
I’m not convinced anyone is particularly good at it if the studies on focus and multitasking are to be believed. Task switching costs, reduced cognitive efficiency and mental fatigue are typical indicators of the distraction of multitasking.
I was given a reminder of the strain of complex coordination as I was relaxing last night. I enjoy Star Trek: The Next Generation and found myself rewatching Data’s Day,” Season 4, Episode 11 in which Dr Crusher teaches Commander Data how to dance before a wedding.
Being an android, Data is able to easily mimic the doctor’s movement after being shown them. But as he learns to the nuances involved in waltzing with the partner he tells doctor (paraphrasing)
As Data tries to integrate the dance moves, their joint body language, the changing direction, and variable speeds you get a visceral sense of why embodied compute requires more processing than intelligence tasks. The final challenge? Smiling while coordinating it all.
