Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] multitasking considered harmful

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Tue, 6 Nov 2007, Jim Locke wrote:

> On Nov 6, 2007 1:08 PM, Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
>
> > http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200711/multitasking
>
> I saw this quite some time ago, and good to see again.

It's in the November 2007 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, so it probably 
wasn't a very long time ago that you saw it unless it was also published 
somewhere else, or maybe you saw a similar article.


> Very true, and it would be nice if today's professionals, marketing 
> people, and management knew this and worked by it.
>
> We're in an age of "more more, faster faster" which often results in a 
> shoddier job done.

I think I've made the mistake of trying to do too much and I have spread 
myself too thin.  It's a great feeling to see the big picture but it is 
through specialization that you win all the respect and the money (really 
by becoming absolutely the best at one small thing).  Veterinarians who 
work with many diseases in many animal species are paid less than 
Physicians who work on many diseases in only one animal species and they 
in turn are paid less than specialist physicians who work on one aspect of 
one disease in one species.  Being the go-to guy in one narrow area is 
worth more to people than being "the guy who knows everything about 
everything."

Another big issue:  As you imply, we've been forcing more people to do 
many different kinds of work.  For example, professors now do a lot more 
of their own secretarial work than they used to.  They used to just 
dictate things and have other people do all the typing work.  Now most of 
them have to do their own word processing.  It is better that way, maybe, 
but it means fewer jobs for secretaries and it also means that brilliant 
people like Jon King have to dedicate a bunch of time to installing, 
learning and running word processing software.  Perfectionists like me 
(and Jon, I'd guess) can easily get sidetracked into spending too much 
time on that kind of stuff -- getting just the right program to do our 
typesetting or whatever.  We also get more into computers than we should.

In my area I feel like I have to be really good in statistics, computing, 
genetics, epidemiology and some aspects of medicine and psychology, but 
it's really impossible to do it all (it's like that in Jon's field too, 
but with more neuroscience thrown in there).  This problem is really a big 
one and it isn't just that I'm not managing my time well (and I am not 
managing my time well).  Many fields now require major interdisciplinary 
projects and people are almost forced to learn a lot in multiple fields in 
order to push research forward.  It's really hard to do everything and the 
pay just isn't good enough to warrant all the stress you get from trying 
to do it all.  There's also the problem of trying to have a life outside 
of work, a family, etc.  So I think I'm going to try to specialize a bit 
more than I have so far.

I just subscribed to the Atlantic so that I can read the whole article.

Mike

_______________________________________________
discussion mailing list
EMAIL:PROTECTED
http://mlug.missouri.edu/mailman/listinfo/discussion