Is Multi-Tasking also Parallelism?
Multi-tasking may not be what it seems to be.
by Adam Chan

The Urban Myth - Multi-tasking?
The phrase “multi-tasking” is commonly used by corporate executives and managers who are perpetually laden with huge amount of tasks to be achieved in parallel hence the implied responsibilities and the impending rewards should successes are obtained. It seems like a great sense of accomplishment awaits any corporate executive or manager if many high value tasks are carried out in parallel. After all, any company leader would yearn for such executives to undertake all the tasks he or she has in mind. Have you met one yet?

In everything we set forth to do, we would think about the process it takes to achieve our desired outcomes. It is easy to understand that with quality thinking it would lead to quality actions hence quality results. This phrase implies the importance of thinking and it suggests that with inaccurate thinking, unlikely any quality result can be expected. Would you agree?

During the pre-information era i.e. before the birth of internet, humans are merely connected through telephone, in-person meeting or writing letters. There is little chance of two persons living thousand miles apart to know of each other existence, let alone becoming friends. Their lives are simple and that may imply they have less tasks to perform but each task would probably take a longer time to complete.

Today, we can be chatting with someone in the cyberspace without the need to know the respondent’s real identity. Making friends (connections) has taken on a brand new meaning. The purpose of chatting has transformed surely. The internet also allows us to perform numerous transactions that we would normally need to schedule time to attend to them in the past. Going to the bank and shopping are two perfect examples.

Although the internet has provided these apparent convenience, did it generate more time in our hands? Have you ever been caught in a situation where you need to pay bills over the internet, i-chatting with a friend, downloading some stuffs, typing an email, browsing ebay for cheap deals and navigating through Amazon for the best buys? Finally you are done with all the transactions, chatting, typing and searching but you discovered that your dirty laundry is still dirty, the morning’s newspaper is in its original delivered state, the oil on your dishes has turned in sludge or you have no more pressed business shirt for tomorrow’s meeting. The key difference between life in the past and modern city living is we now have more tasks to perform and with the help of technology, each task suppose to take less time. How well do you think the city dwellers perform in multi-tasking?

What is Multi-tasking?
I would like to present two anecdotes that are totally different but they appear to converge at the essence of suggesting what Multi-tasking might be.

The first anecdote; let’s look at the central processing unit a.k.a. CPU. This term is known as the brain of the computer system. The most illuminated feature of a superior CPU is its ability to compute numerous operations simultaneously. This non-negotiable feature is fundamental and expected and consumer will not part with his or her money unless this is fulfilled. Would you purchase a computer system that computes the operations one at a time?