Column: Jeremy Corey-Gruenes, Paths to Peace

The other night I was talking to my older brother on the phone. Jeff is married, works a demanding job, and has two sons who keep him very busy. So it came as no surprise when I noticed the tell-tale signs of his multi-tasking during our conversation.

After about 10 minutes, I said, “Look, Jeff. I can tell you’re busy. Call me when you have time to talk. No big deal.”

“What are you talking about?” he said. “I was just checking my peas in the garden. I was listening! I bet you had no idea I was even outside.”

Right.

The sounds of cars driving by, his elevated breathing, the unnatural pauses, the breeze on his phone’s mic, the occasional grunts as he bent over to pull a weed, the need to repeat myself so he could catch what he’d missed when focusing on something else — no, nothing had given him away.

“Are you suggesting I was neglecting you? I’m hurt!” he insisted. “I can do two things at once!”

Jeff was kidding, sort of. He actually thinks he’s good at multi-tasking, but he knows I can tell when he’s doing it, and I’m pretty sure he knows his attention suffers for it. And he’s not alone.

Research indicates that while many of us think we’re good at balancing multiple tasks simultaneously, most of us are in fact much slower and more careless when we do. David Brooks writes in his new book “The Social Animal” that we are 50 percent less efficient whenever we become distracted from a specific task, which is an inherent part of multi-tasking, and we tend to make about 50 percent more errors when trying to do more than one thing at a time.

While I call out my brother for multi-tasking, I must admit I’m guilty, too. I’ve read books on my Kindle while “watching” my daughters play at the park. I often have the Twins TV broadcast on my computer while trying to type a column or plan for class on a different screen. I sometimes play my guitar while my wife talks to me and almost always fail the quiz afterward when she says, “OK, what did I just say?”

More disconcerting is that 21st century technology is normalizing multi-tasking.

I work with young people who claim since they’ve grown up with more technology they are better multi-taskers than adults. Some even argue that they should be able to text in class and that talking on the phone while driving really isn’t dangerous. Research suggests most of them are delusional.

The University of Utah recently published results from a multi-tasking study pairing driving with other tasks requiring concentration. Of college students in the study, 97.5 percent were unable to multi-task successfully. It follows that texting during class or while studying would be detrimental to learning.

Think about it. We all know the best learning takes place when we’re able to concentrate, uninterrupted, on a single subject for however long it takes us to “get it.” One has little hope, for example, of really comprehending anything beyond surface plot points in a complex novel while checking text messages every four or five minutes.

As multi-tasking becomes the norm, we risk never recognizing the value of extended and exclusive engagement in one task and — more importantly — never cultivating the discipline to actually see such extended tasks through. Research referenced in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” suggests that success in higher math is related more to the willingness and ability to concentrate and work hard for long stretches of time than to one’s IQ or just being “good at math.”

William Powers, author of “Hamlet’s Blackberry,” suggests that unplugging the Internet at home on the weekends has made him a better husband and father. An accidental drowning of his smartphone one weekend led him to understand that sometimes one has to be without those easy temptations to avoid the perils of multi-tasking.

Because I have to work at home most weekends, I don’t know if I could completely follow Powers here, but I think everyone in my family could benefit from designating some unplugged blocks of time.

One of my goals at the beginning of every school year is to establish a classroom culture where my students are encouraged to dwell in the present moment, to give their full attention to what’s happening there. It can be hard to do, but it’s possible if you can minimize distractions and, as a Spartan teacher once said, figure out how to “make honorable things pleasant to children.”

While I take some pleasure in beating up my big brother over his multi-tasking, writing this column reminds me of how many of my habits and routines take me out of the present moment and miss out on what’s really happening there. I suspect I’m not alone. Email, Facebook, planning for tomorrow can wait until the kids are in bed.

Jeremy Corey-Gruenes teaches at Albert Lea High School and lives in Albert Lea with his wife and two young daughters. He can be reached at jcorey2@gmail.com.