Multitasking Limits

[Don]

According to researchers at the University of Oregon as published in the journal Psychological Science and reported on this website,

http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=2WKFS4UAVWHWQQSNDLRSK HSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=205921005

humans can only think about four things at once. This is not a static number, however. The more complex the concepts being considered, the fewer can be considered at the same time. Similarly, the more simple concepts can be considered at the same time.

Further, people with higher IQs can think of more things simultaneously. However, merely having a high IQ does not guarantee that a person will think about multiple things in a better way than a person with a lower IQ who is considering fewer things.

Note that this consideration of what is essentially a form of short-term memory makes even smaller the concept that the conscious can only consider 6±3 things at the same time as expressed in the book Flow and accepted by many NLPers and hypnotists.

[Merlin]

Fortunately, that only applies to conscious tracking :)

[Potato]

Is this the basis for Milton Erickson's confusion/overload techniques where he would occupy the conscious mind with trying to decipher a long string of nonsense and then tell the person to go into a trance?

[Poodle]

Interesting article on MSN about gene research. All people at one time had brown eyes. There was one person that had a gene mutation and had blue eyes so therefore every person in the whole world that has blue eyes is related to that original person with the gene mutation. My comment is: Yeah - right. Then why in my tiny little family does my brother have blue and I have green if we are related to the same person waaaaaay back or are my brother and I not related or a thousand other or's. It seems as if green is the same as brown, just lacking in something that is a "m" making the brown "lighter"????? At that time in history the blue eyed person must have lived pretty far north in Europe, huh? or else blue eyes just like cooler weather?????

NLP is the mind is capable of 7 + or minus 2 bits of information at a time. Lane did a nice write up on it for a poster wanting to know exactly what it meant.

[DonaldJ]

Only four thoughts at one time.. Yikes! must be like living in a hell..?

It takes maintaining six distinct focuses to hypnotize sea water into relaxing as calm as glass is smooth, for as long as the six focuses are maintained...


To increase ones level of multitasking focuses, try this simple experiment, and become proficient at it...

Take a simple arithmetic repeating evolving series of formulas..
For the first lets say.. 1 plus 1 equals 2..
Add a second formula.. 100-2=98, and return to start.. 1+2=3, 98-2=96..
Add a third.. 2x2=4.. 1+3=4.. 96-2=94.. and add a forth formula... and try to beat my 17... (now where's that mighty Silverback beating on his chest, Smilie?..)