Guy Reams (00:01.25)
This is day 236, multitasking is myth. I'm young enough to remember the early days of the x86 architecture and the subsequent PC revolution. I remember a time before operating systems could prioritize workloads or manage thread execution in parallel, creating the illusion of multitasking across applications. The architecture behind early chipsets allowed only a single instruction to be processed at any given moment.
That remains largely true today, say for simultaneous multithreading or SMT, which allows a core to share state with two threads for certain specific functions. Back in college, I recall writing batch routines that would elevate the priority of my process, forcing the system to give it more attention. You could still do that today, of course, but with advances in software design and hardware speed, it's hardly necessary.
We now have machines equipped with multiple cores, enabling true parallelism across threads. Yet even that is a bit of a design trick. At its heart, it's just multiple execution units, not some magical enhancement to a single processor's ability. And this, I've come to realize mirrors the human condition as quite well. Over the years, we've developed tricks and tools and workflows to give ourselves the illusion of doing more.
of being able to handle more than what a single human mind is truly capable of. Cue my wife, or any other perceptive woman in my life, who will immediately call me out. You've never been a mom, they'll say. You've never had to juggle five jobs at once while keeping constant vigilance over your child's well-being. And they're not wrong. This certainly appears to be a form of multitasking, and perhaps it is. But I often reply, I breathe while I sleep. Doesn't that count?
The silence I received last time I said that tells me, no, it most certainly does not. The truth is, at least for my particular strain of humanity, the male side anyway, multitasking is not truly possible. I can switch rapidly between tasks and I can maintain the appearance of doing many things at once, but in reality, I can only effectively focus on one thing at a time. This idea is unpopular. Many pride themselves on their ability to multitask.
Guy Reams (02:27.36)
It shows up proudly on LinkedIn profiles and on resumes. They are taskmasters with color coded calendars, three monitor workstations and a deep seated anxiety over unread email. I've lived that life. For years, I wore the multitasking badge with pride, but deep down, I always knew the truth. I was still just processing one thing at a time, just switching quickly between them.
I've spent a great deal of time researching this, trying to understand the limits of our cognitive design, and the evidence is there that conscious brain has limited bandwidth. Working memory is finite, constrained to a few active threads of thought at any given moment. Yes, the subconscious mind may handle multiple streams like background processes humming along, but the part of me that is actively aware, that chooses, that reasons, is very singular in its focus.
And this is not a weakness. In fact, it may be our greatest strength. The power of focused attention of undivided mental energy is something we've perhaps undervalued in our age of constant distraction. Instead of pretending we are more than we are, maybe it's time to embrace this limitation as what it is, a gift. One thought at a time, one task at a time, one life lived with deliberation.