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What’s so bad about multitasking? (part 2)
What is an interrupt?
In a previous post I discussed Colonel John Boyds concept of the OODA loop and the peril of constantly interrupting yourself: that is to say, multitasking. The OODA loop says that a task performance cycle comprises distinct phases: Observe, Orient, Decide and Act; and that interrupting any of these has serious consequences for task completion. Boyd first defined the loop in the context of aerial combat, but later generalized it to performance of any and all tasks.
Multitasking is simply trying to juggle competing OODA loops, where you are continually and constantly interrupting one loop to attend to another. Interrupts are bad, even if they are deliberate — as is the case in multitasking — and cause re-work as well as cognitive and even emotional fatigue.
Just what are interrupts?
An interrupt can be thought of in the context of flow: the state where ease of productivity and even joy in the work process clicks in and you hum along. If we think of flow in the context of the Observe, Orient, Decide and Act loop, it’s when the loop completes smoothly.
Interrupts put a stop to flow: they are where one context interferes with another, requiring, in the parlance of the OODA loop, a redo of, at least, the Observe and Orient phases.
