Daniel Levitin Quotes

Experts say you can't concentrate on more than one task at a time.

There's no such thing as multitasking.

If you try to multitask in the classic sense of doing two things at once, what you end up doing is quasi-tasking. It's like being with children. You have to give it your full attention for however much time you have, and then you have to give something else your full attention.

I think people who multitask pay a huge price. They think they're being extra productive, and I think when you multitask so much you don't have time to think about anything deeply, you are giving the world an advantage you shouldn't do, and practically everybody is drifting into that mistake.

I think that we get so distracted with our smartphones... It takes your body and your brain time to switch between tasks. If we can focus on what we're doing, we'll be more productive at that task.

Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption.

Task switching is hard because we do not control what is on our mind. Despite our efforts, the original task continues to occupy our mental bandwidth. Although we can control where our time goes, we cannot fully control how our bandwidth is allocated.

I'll always be working on five things at once, usually with those documents open at the same time because if I get stuck somewhere I'll jump over to something else. That's how my head has always worked.

Multi-tasking arises out of distraction itself.

I do think to some extent multitasking is a way of fooling ourselves that we're being exceptionally efficient.

Most of the work on multitasking suggests that it generally makes you less efficient, not more.

In effect, dividing your attention means that neither (or none) of the things you're working on is really getting the full effect of your intelligence, and that it in the end takes you longer than it would if you did one thing at a time.

It is easier to do many things than to do one thing continuously for a long time.

I have to always make sure I don't stay in one place and spend too much time one subject. I have my wife tell me [through an earpiece], "Come back! You're taking too long on that subject." I need to be reeled in.

Most of us can easily do two things at once; what's all but impossible is to do one thing at once.

Each thing I do, I rush through, so I can do something else.

Whenever you're doing two things at once, you're compromising them both.

You can't work on 15 problems at the same time.

To do two things at once is to do neither.

I believe that one can indeed work on two or more tasks at once, but in ways yet to be understood.

Many people feel they must multi-task because everybody else is multitasking, but this is partly because they are all interrupting each other so much.

I have a short attention span, so when one book isn't working out, I just work on another.

We used to think that you could pay attention to five to nine things at a time. We now know that's not true. That's a crazy overestimate. The conscious mind can attend to about three things at once. Trying to juggle any more than that, and you're going to lose some brainpower.

I multitask and always have the TV on in the background. If I need to focus, I generally have to turn off the TV.

You wouldn't read 'Anna Karenina' and try to work on the computer at the same time, would you?