64 ◾ A Factory of One
and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of
the higher areas related to memory and learning.
We concentrate on the act of concentration at the
expense of whatever it is that we’re supposed to be
concentrating on. … In reality, multitasking slows our
thinking. It forces us to chop competing tasks into
pieces, set them in different piles, then hunt for the
pile we’re interested in, pick up its pieces, review the
rules for putting the pieces back together, and then
attempt to do so, often quite awkwardly.
7
It’s no surprise that our ability to focus on a single task
without interruption is waning. To some extent, an increase in
interruptions is an inevitable result of the larger, more com-
plex organizations of toda