In your experience, does listening to a podcast in the background while you're doing other work on the computer distract you from either absorbing the content of the podcast, reading something, or typing up what you're working on? I think listening to music might decrease my productivity in typing things up, but not reading on the computer. However, I think it puts me in the zone and keeps me from getting distracted from things besides what I'm working on, so I'll take that tradeoff.
However, this hasn't been my experience when listening to podcasts. Well, in particular, I'll listen to lectures on YouTube in a tab in the background. However, when I've done this in the past, I've had negative results. Really, sometimes I'll be reading an article while listening to a lecture or interview in the background, one hour will pass, and I'll realize I don't remember a single thing that was said by the speaker(s). Alternatively, if I consciously focus on listening to the lecture/interview while my eyes continue to scan, I'll realize I've completed moving my eyes over an entire paragraph without absorbing any of the content. It seems focusing on two mediums of intellectual content at the same time is too intense a form of multitasking for my brain to handle. Focusing on one simply wrecks my ability to focus on the other, to nearly a complete degree. Does anyone else have this experience? Do you know any ways around it?
I have the same experience. Even with nootropics, just reading a text message in a lecture makes me miss some of what the speaker is saying. If I’m trying to read anything more complicated than that while someone is speaking, I take about 5⨉ longer than usual, and I have worse recall afterwards. I’d assume that this effect is tied to how much you subvocalize while reading. Not subvocalizing would perhaps make it easier to focus on the reading and shutting out what the speaker is saying.
ReplyDeleteIt would, however, _really_ surprise me if there were a way to focus on two sources of intellectual content at the same time and ending up more efficient than consuming them in sequence.
My impression of the literature on this topic is that humans can't multitask, except when mixing different types of activities, like talking and walking simultaneously.
ReplyDeleteI personally hate trying to do two things at once. I can't even listen to music while reading/writing because it's distracting. I only listen to music when doing "mindless" tasks.
I never understood how people could read their laptops while listening to lectures in college. Maybe it was because they weren't actually listening to the lecture very well. Or maybe it's just sour grapes because I'm less talented than they are.
>except when mixing different types of activities, like talking and walking simultaneously.
DeleteAnother friend of mine mentioned also mentioned the literature bears out apparently this is apparently the only way humans can multitask. Listening to music without lyrics doesn't distract me when I'm writing. Listening to music with lyrics does. This may because lyrical music may interfere with the modality of language already engaged by writing, while other music doesn't.
I was aware of the literature, but didn't place what I was trying to do in my mental category of what counts as "multitasking".
>I can't even listen to music while reading/writing because it's distracting. I only listen to music when doing "mindless" tasks.
I listen to music in the background around the house when doing chores or something. I'm not paying attention to the music, then, though. When I listen to music while reading or writing I treat the music as the mindless task. For example, as I write this comment, I'm in an Internet cafe which has a radio constantly playing, so I have my headphones to listen to an EDM playlist on YouTube. I find the radio distracting, so I'm using my own music which I just find soothing in the background to cancel it out. All evening, as soon as the music from my own laptop has become distracting, I've changed the song immediately.