I started the experiment around 11:00 on black Friday. Since I had no definite plans, or money to go shopping I figured this would be easy. My plan was to watch movies all day. In, retrospect, this was perhaps the stupidest thing I could have done, but I learned the impact TV really has on me.
The First Half
I wake up, my mom has made breakfast. My sister and her are in the living room eating in front of the TV like usual. I eat in the dining room. I have to clear a space on the dining room, because it’s literally a table that holds things. We rarely eat at the table. This is annoying because “Space Jam” has just came on TV and I hadn’t seen that movie in a long time. So I try to wolf down my food so that I won’t miss too much of “Space Jam”. However, my sister Nekia keeps talking to me. I tell her about my project and how I can’t talk and eat at the same time. She narrows her eyes and says, “Imma make you talk.” And proceeds to ask me questions and be annoying. I finish my breakfast and go sit in the Living Room and watch “Space Jam”.
My mother then tries to talk to me, I explain the project to her and she sounds interested, but she continues to talk to me throughout the entire movie. I have to fight the urge to talk to her, because I realize how much bonding time we share, sitting in front of the TV watching movies together and analyzing them. Most of the movies I’ve watched in my life, have been with my mother, she’s always right beside explaining things about the movie, or asking questions. So not being able to communicate during the movie was extremely hard for both of us. Besides, I’m infamous, for talking during movies.
We watch, “Space Jam”, “Legion” and “The Road” back to back. While I usually can sit in front of the TV for about 6 hours straight, I find myself becoming hungry. But because I know I can’t eat and watch TV at the same time, I don’t eat anything. However I do drink water, and I turn my back to the TV to drink water, so I don’t feel like I’m cheating. I talk much more than I should have during those three movies so I would give myself an accuracy rating of 55% for the first half of the day because I honestly tried.
The Car Ride
I decide to go visit my friend Paige around 5:00. So I get in the car and drive to her house without any music. This was actually relaxing, because I get tired of hearing the same songs on the radio every day. While driving, I noticed I do drive a little fast. And I pay very little attention to where I’m actually going, because I usually rely on the GPS or someone else to tell me where I’m going. Once I pull up to her house another friend calls me, and I turn off my car, and sit and talk to her for about 30 minutes. This isn’t unusual though; I usual can’t talk on the phone and do other thing, that’s just rude. I give myself am accuracy rating of 100% for the car ride.
Second Half
The second half, I willingly gave up on, I knew it would be way too much to pull off and I was simply exhausted at trying to uni-task; which seems to be harder than multi-tasking! When I got into Paige’s house we went into the kitchen, she fixed us plates of Thanksgiving leftovers, I talked. I was doing well, but then she said lets, go into the living room to eat. And I knew it wasn’t even worth explaining. Because people love to eat in front of the TV! So yes, I gave up. At exactly, 5:30 I failed my experiment.
Results
Apparently, I have a slight attention disorder. Throughout the experiment, I kept notes of things I noticed about myself and others.
“Kia keeps talking to me”
“In “Space Jam”, there was one line that featured product placement of Hanes, Wheaties, Nike and McDonalds.”
“When I’m in front of the TV, I’m hungry, when I’m not in front of it, I’m not.”
“Legion is a horrible movie, why do the angels speak in Shakespearean language?”
“This is going horribly.”
“I’ve officially failed. Not multi-tasking is stupid.”
“Multitasking makes us feel efficient” according to Jacobs essay, but I realized that, while I don’t multi-task as much as others, for me it’s not a feeling of accomplishment or efficiency. It simple makes the experience better. Had this experiment taken place during a school day, it would have not been as hard. I’m not a good multi-tasker, anyway. I can’t read and listen to music at the same time, nor can I text and drive. But eating, watching TV and talking at the same time are my weakness. It’s what I do best. Watching a movie and talking to other people who are watching it with me, makes what I’m watching seem more like a shared experience. When I watch a movie with my friends and family and we all laugh at a joke, we’ll repeat it, it becomes an inside/running joke that makes us that much closer. I learn about human behaviors through watching a movie and talking about as it happens, I bond with the characters, predict endings and criticize bad ones. Watching a movie in silence is just lonely, and dumb, and not as fun. Lynn Spiegel’s essay, “Making Room for TV”, “Television, it was said, would bring the family ever closer,” and in my opinion it always has.
The eating part I can’t really explain, but I’m just naturally hungrier watching TV, perhaps the millions of fast food commercials. It’s also an absent minded thing, that’s just a hard temptation to fight. Because lounging on the couch and watching TV is complimented by a nice bag of greasy chips. It’s like a mini vacation, where you can just zone out.
However, I was much more focused on what I was doing at the time when I was uni-tasking. But, that did not make the task more fun. My connections to people were stronger, and I realized how much I tune out when I talk to certain people. But I already knew that. And usually if I’m talking to people and start “multi-tasking” it’s on purpose, because they’re boring me.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the experiment was fun. I wish I had more of a plan going into this, though. I underestimated how much I actually multi-task in life. It’s because I do it so often it comes naturally now, so I don’t even know if I’m actually “multi-tasking”. However, I will make more of an effort to eat without watching TV. I’ve realized my addiction to TV is getting slightly out of hand; if I can only eat, when I’m in front of a television. I’m planning on trying this experiment again, perhaps over the Christmas break, and hopefully, I can stick with it.
Speigel, Lynn. 2010. "Making Room for TV". Communication in History.Sixth Edition. 2010
Jacobs, AJ. "How I Stopped the Multitasking Madness" Retrieved November 27 2010. (http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/time-management/stop-the-madness-00000000020965/index.html)
Nia,
ReplyDeleteYour blog was very enjoyable to read. Although you chose the 2nd assignment to attempt, I too can relate to the frusturation you felt when you can only do one thing at a time. Everything becomes inconveinant to our personal ways when we have to limit what we normally do.You had a lot of temptations to fail and you stuck with the assignment for a good amount of time.I also see how our families have adapted to technology and multi-tasking and make it hard for us to try to complete the assingments.
-Kara Frazier
Nia,
ReplyDeleteI commend your efforts in trying to succeed at uni-tasking. I was going to attempt to do this, but realized that it would probably be harder than ignoring media because of my addiction to talking. I like how you have your blog set up into sections; it made reading it seem like a lab report (being an ex-chemistry major, I get a big kick out of nerdy things). I guess multi-tasking becomes a battle between enjoyment and quality/efficiency. I'm sure if I sat down and wrote a paper with no interruptions, it would be quicker to write, and, hopefully, better in quality. But, I would be absolutely miserable. I believe there is a perfect balance somewhere between uni-tasking and productive (being the key word) multi-tasking. I just feel like no college student has discovered this yet.