Workscape Institute

Search the web or research archives for “multi-tasking” and you’ll find a wealth of debate about a term and behavior that didn’t exist before 1966, when multi-tasking computers entered the scene.  Today, the debate carries on as to the extent to which multi-tasking erodes human performance – but the general consensus is, it does. 

William Calvin, University of Washington, in Seminars in the Neurosciences notes that humans are separated from apes by a number of augmented mental abilities including multi-tasking mechanisms that allow us to perform parallel tasks simultaneously.  He makes no comment on just how effectively humans can multi-task.

You may be nodding your head after reading that, appreciative of scientific support for what you consider to be a strength and a talent.  You probably think of your multi-tasking as a conscious activity, but that depends on your definition of conscious engagement.  When you’re on that conference call and responding to an e-mail, are you really listening to the call?  Ever had to ask someone to repeat his question, resorting to blaming it on the phone or connection when – in reality - you really just weren’t paying enough attention?

And what about when you’re in a meeting?  You, like most everyone else in the meeting, have your phone, your BlackBerry, with you.  You’re paying attention, but get an urge to check your messages.  Now half-paying attention to the meeting, you check for a new message.  You don’t have one, but scroll around your inbox for a few seconds anyway, click on an earlier message that catches your attention again, and then go back to your meeting.  A few minutes later, you find yourself checking your BlackBerry again, without really understanding why.

Ever wonder why you do it?  Ever wonder what compelled you to look when there was no new message alert?
— Boredom?
— Fatigue?
— Because your intake of information had slowed and you needed a quick boost?

The answer?  You’ve succumbed to the digital yawn, a new behavior born of the proliferation of information devices.

Strangely enough, as behaviorists and sociologists have, unsuccessfully, tried to explain why people yawn, theories have cited all 3 of the reasons above – of course, ‘information’ in those studies is oxygen.

Consider other parallels – 55 percent of people will yawn within five minutes of seeing someone else yawn.  The average yawn lasts about six seconds, about the time it takes you to pick up your phone, check the inbox, scroll around, and then put your phone back on the table.  And your heart rate can rise as much as 30 percent during a yawn – sound like a familiar experience when you read an aggravating e-mail? 

Adding to the riddle as to why we yawn is the fact that we do it even before we’re born.  Almost makes you wonder if there’s truth to the crack about your colleague being “born with a BlackBerry in his hand…”

“Compounding the mystery,” World Science points out, “is the odd way in which the contagious power of yawning is largely unconscious. We can see someone yawn, yearn to replicate the action ourselves, and do it, all without thinking about it. Other times we’re aware it is happening, though it still floats somewhere beneath the realm of reason and of purposeful actions.”  See someone else do it and you’ve got little chance of escaping – it takes tremendous mental effort to avoid doing it yourself.

For clues as to how the digital yawn started and made its way around the table, consider who initiated the yawn, and to whom it spreads.  Christine Johnson and Tasha Oswald, of the University of California, San Diego, offer help with the results of their studies on Distributed Cognition.  They studied – you guessed it – apes, and noted that the spread of behavior is related to the social and power relationships between subjects. 

Was it your boss who started it?  Did he look at his BlackBerry first?  Who was next?  Was it you?  A peer?  Soon everyone in the sphere of influence is picking up their BlackBerry, their attention wavering from the meeting.

Calvin also notes that man is differentiated from apes by how choices are made between alternative behaviors.  An apt concept as we try to distinguish ourselves from our primate predecessors, and rise above the urge to yawn.

Remember, you’re evolved.  Take a breath. Absorb the information in the meeting, not your BlackBerry.  Resist the urge.  Leave the BlackBerry where it is, and know you can check your e-mail when the meeting is over.  Make the meeting better, more effective, more efficient, more decisive, and maybe even shorter, so everyone can get back to work, to checking their messages!

Now, if you’re in a meeting where you can truly participate digital yawning all the way through,  well, perhaps you shouldn’t have been in the meeting to begin with – but then, that’s another story…