A Multitasking Fish Story by Reid Linney, VP, Human Resources, Advanced Micro Devices As a teenager, I kept tropical fish for a hobby (too bad for the fish, I'm afraid). One day I unwittingly purchased a pregnant guppy, which I kept in an aquarium with angelfish and other varieties. When I realized the guppy was pregnant I went out and bought a "breeder tank." It's a small container that sits inside your aquarium and enables the mom to deliver her eggs in a way that protects them from being eaten by the other fish. Everything went great -- the eggs were laid, the new fish spawned, I fed them, they grew, nobody got eaten. The problem was, I wasn't sure when to take the babies out of the small breeder tank and expose them to the risks in the big aquarium. So I waited for them to reach a "safe" size.

Reid Linney, VP, Human Resources, AMD

 At some point, it seemed to me that they weren't growing much any more. So I released them into the aquarium. As it turned out, I'd kept them in the breeder tank too long. They had stopped growing altogether. I had created dwarves!

This was a total shock to me. Apparently, the fish only grew to a size that their environment would support -- then they stopped. In a sense (and here, finally, is the connection) they developed to fit the situation.

As I began working with people, that learning was reinforced. I surmised that peoples' development was a function of their opportunities. If the raw material was there, they could grow BIG skills given BIG opportunities, or only little skills given little opportunities.

A corollary here is that most people have a reservoir of untapped capability - because we either don't or can't provide the precise amount of opportunity to grow their skills at the optimal rate.

So, does multitasking hurt or enhance peoples' productivity? My sense is that it presents an opportunity for people to draw on their reservoir of untapped capabilities, build their skills and enhance their productivity. In fact, you could argue that multitasking is an ideal tool, because it enables each individual to tackle opportunities at a rate that best fits their personal situation.

At a gut level, I believe that people who are "fully engaged" (which multitasking demands) are more passionate, more energetic, more productive, more accomplished, and have higher levels of self-esteem.

One more point. Multitasking requires that you establish priorities on the fly. My sense is that the less important stuff tends to sink to the bottom. So you could hypothesize that multitasking enhances productivity by focusing energies on the more important stuff. The potential glitch in that argument is that what's most important/pressing in the short-term could be the least important in the longer term, and vice-versa. Multitasking probably over-weights short-term priorities, hence the potential glitch.