Readers,

We’d like to begin by apologizing for the hiatus in content over the past two months. As we work tirelessly towards finishing our Minuteman Life magazine – which we aim to release before Spring Break – staggering deadlines and workloads has become an impossible task. Although we believed that with a disciplined plan, our normal publishing cycle would remain intact even while we undertook the magazine work – this proved to be an overly ambitious hope. What resulted instead, was a fragmented, overlapping two months of hard work, with no tangible results. We do trust that the extra time has produced especially interesting content, both in this online set, and in next month’s magazine.

The content stall – and the frustration that came along with it – brought up the interesting issue of multitasking and the question of its true effectiveness. By definition, multitasking is about doing more work in less time. Put simply, if you can do two things simultaneously, you will finish them quicker than if you would have done one at a time. But is this rationale really practical? Does multitasking actually promote ineffectiveness by dividing attention? Is our normal work process just slowed by overwhelming ourselves?

In short: yes. There is ample neurological research that suggests doing two things at once is actually impossible. The brain must pause and refocus when switching between tasks, and the lag time between these exchanges is almost completely unproductive. The more involved these tasks are, the more difficult it is for the brain to change gears, and thus the more lag time. In his book “The Brain at Work”, David Rock likens these brain processes to a production on a stage. Each task is a “scene” and requires a different set, cast, and plot; meaning that whenever the “scene” changes, so too must everything onstage. The set must be carried out, the actors must changeover, and everything must be focused towards a different goal. Thus, if your brain is attempting to balance different tasks, you get a chaotic backlog onstage of changing scenes and actors. As a result, the brain is more cluttered, less productive and especially prone to mistakes.

The myth of multitasking is constantly present in our lives at school. With five to six academic classes and countless extracurriculars, it is not uncommon to have to do math problems between scenes of Shakespeare after getting home from rehearsal. We believe that, in order for all of our work to get done, it must be completed in a frenzied clump of shifting focus. Multitasking is often construed as efficiency, when it actually encourages the distinct opposite. Instead of managing everything together, we’re forcing a dozen different stage crews and casts to run on and off of a stage – running into each other and breaking bones in the process.

After our inefficient two-month hiatus, the Editorial Board is stepping back and reflecting on the downfalls of attempted multitasking, and finding obvious proof of what science has already told us. It is important that we all take time to reflect on our own futile tendencies to multitask, and rethink how we may approach the juggling act that is Newark Academy. Whether it’s through better planning, more regimented work time, or an increase in short breaks, it is vital that we all identify and work to counteract the multitasking fallacy.

Here’s to an even more successful end of winter,

The Minuteman Staff