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Many people who talk about work effectiveness, productivity and the like, suggest that multitasking doesn't work. Being into starcraft, it interested me, in that obviously that's a huge part of starcraft. Here's a concept drawing of how I've come to view that issue:
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/6jEEgq1.jpg)
Multitasking, mostly doesn't exist. Even for starcraft pros. What looks like multitasking is single focus shifting in very high frequency, back and forth, with very high accuracy, relevance and efficiency, between most relevant areas of available priority work.
For untrained newbies, the difference isn't that they suck at multitasking. It's this:
1) their frequency, in terms of shifting back and forth between varied targets of available priority work, one by one, is lower in general,
2) their capacity to maintain balance and clarity, while going high frequency - in terms of shifting between varied targets of available priority work, one by one, is much lower (maintaining balance and clarity, i.e. sense of order and keeping track of what they're doing, aligning each task to fit into the build they're trying to execute etc., not missing basic actions such as blocking the ramp with zealots etc.)
Single-tasking exists and it doesn't work, not in terms of how most people view it, and certainly not in starcraft. The primary reason is obvious, downtime. Most tasks have durations of time where further work is irrelevant, inefficient, or not possible, for these durations.
Let's say you're managing your scouting scv - after you've glanced at it's environment in the opponent's base, there's downtime. This tiny flash of time is enough to secure a glimpse and mentally update status of the situation.
More miliseconds on this area of work becomes irrelevant and inefficient - only for a few more miliseconds or seconds, depending on the prior intel and scouting scv's location - but it does. That's because in that brief window of time, you can shift focus to another area and perform a tiny portion of work that adds more value to your build, and your ability to keep executing and adapting your build accurately.
For example, send worker to an expansion's location, check for holes in the defenses on the ramp, adjust marines formation, send scv to the location of the next supply depot, then come back to check in on the scouting scv. That adds more strength to the build than to just watch the scouting scv, when you've already re-routed it and ensured it won't die for the next few seconds.
The following terms offer a more accurate representation of how doing more, in less time, looks like and works.
Terms:
Available priority work - whatever is priority but also can be worked on right this second, in favor of another priority that's been taken care of for some miliseconds or seconds.
Example - scout can be a priority task but you don't just keep watching the scouting probe. Instead, you keep shifting your attention back and forth between base, minimap, scouting probe's environment, in adaptation to what's these acts of attention reveal.
Singular focus shifting in high frequency - singular as in, not scattered, one task at a time. When this focus becomes trained in terms of shifting, back and forth, between available priority work areas, it can look like multitasking. In reality, it's utilizing all kinds of downtime periods, from the tiniest flashes of miliseconds to longer durations. In doing so, it shifts to a tiny, or larger, bit of another priority work that can be completed in that very small fragment of time.
Over time, of course, this builds up to a huge difference. Both in terms of being highly aware and executing with great responsiveness, as in:
1) being rock solid and able to pre-emptively re-check things, keep track of things, update mental status of how the build's going, be extremely alert for any problems or threats that might occur, mentally noting scout intel, checking no holes, checking no build errors etc.,
2) being extremely responsive and immediate to opponent's moves, to one's own actions and errors in terms of build, and in being on time with the right actions where they're needed for the build, army management, scouting management, workers etc.
Essentially, what skill is, what a pro does, in part, is that through so much training, a very sophisticated kind of attention develops. It's the kind of attention that can operate with extremely high frequency, rapidly shifting between areas of feasible priority work, while maintaing full clarity and sense of order.
This enables constantly completing volumes of extra work on the microscopic scale (e.g. glancing at a minimap, checking the supply, sending worker to an expansion location, sending a ling to scout - most of these take miliseconds) but in a way that tends to fit each of these tasks such that they all add up to an integrated, solid build - one that tends to accomplish more, more securely, in less time.
This is an aspect of how someone with great skills, a progamer, ends up gaining strategic advantages over the opponent, in terms of proper adaptation, responsiveness, making much less errors, being more aware of opportunities and threats, executing more strategically relevant, and accurate, actions per unit of time, and so on.
 
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While I agree with your description of multi-tasking, I think you're missing an important piece of the puzzle. We essentially use two different modes of thinking. One of them requires our attention and the other runs in the background. An important aspect of multi-tasking is moving many tasks from the former to the latter through practice. It's essentially the same process as learning to drive a car. Initially you need to consciously take care of everything. Eventually you start to develop habits, which frees up a lot of your attention. This is well described in a book I'm currently reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
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On July 07 2020 00:50 coffeesession wrote:
Multitasking, mostly doesn't exist.
im kinda obsessed about my camera control and switching quickly between camera positions. whenever i switch from a screen to another i try doing everything as precisely as possible, not fast, precise. My apm dropped about 50 actions per minute after i started trying to do stuff this way, but the amount of time i spend looking at one camera has decreased a lot, this makes me able "to be at more places at once".
So based on personal experience i completely agree with what u said in the quote above, as you said is just switching focus from one thing to the next one, not doing multiple stuff at once.
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Actually, it's very interesting how that fits into that puzzle. And I've deliberately said how my expressions of insight fit into that puzzle, and not the other way around. It's potentially a very vast and nuanced field of questions to explore.
I love how R. Feynman said that we can never be right, we can only be sure that we're wrong. We just have a more accurate and practical theory than the previous one, and we keep on developing like this. Theory by theory, more wrong theory to less wrong, to even slightly less wrong, and so on.
However, I will delineate this puzzle in a bit more detail, and showcase how it fits. More or less, in line with the above statement, since as Mr. Feynman taught us, we can never be right, only less wrong than before.
In terms of raw technical details, a player can put their attention on one spot at a time. It's fairly improbable that there's multitasking as such. When the frequency is high enough, expressed with skill, it can seem so.
Clue 1 - significantly higher frequency of focus shifts require significantly more effective processing capability. Higher frequency focus shifts provide much more inputs. If they're not processed fast enough, they're not very usable and can also cause instability and losing clarity.
Clue 2 - the key word is more effective, not faster processing. This is what I've read in Josh Waitzkin's book, the Art of Learning, a chapter expounded on this very subject. Integrating knowledge into your unconscious, or into the background processes.
Over time, the high speed, unconscious processing can gradually take over what's conscious trained at. At some point, it's automated quite fully. The conscious, much like pressing a button, only needs to recall trigger, think of it - to activate the chain of well-trained chunks, then the unconscious executes that which was internalized in them.
It doesn't necessarily mean that the brain learns to process it faster, it learns to organize it better. Both in terms of space and content, and in terms of the process of organizing it.
The analogy is one of having pre-knowledge of what most of the possible inputs are, and having ready slots, tools, marking systems, organizational training, routes etc. ready. With that, inputs can be handled that much quicker - but it doesn't require more processing power (often it requires less).
J. Waitzkin used the analogy of the jungle - at first it's a thick forest, you don't see shit. You've got no idea what the fuck's going on and it takes hours to even cross a few meters. After a lot of time and work, you've cut a lot of useful pathways. You don't need to cut through them again. You can travel even faster, if you can somehow build roads and get some vehicle.
How does that fit into the puzzle?
Consider storehouse analogy.
There are two main aspects and they are:
1) input deliveries,
2) input processing.
There are inputs delivered continuously and they are delivered through the medium of focus. The frequency of shifts of focus, shapes input. If the frequency's high, there's more inputs to process and less time to do so, and vice versa. Given that, it matters a great deal how the inputs are handled.
How effectively the inputs are being handled, puts a cap, to a degree, on how high the frequency of focus shifts can be. At least until their handling becomes enhanced through training, reflection and tests.
If there is no internal informational scaffolding, it's a bit like operators of a large storehouse who receive completely new combination of contents, delivery times, delivery means and methods, delivery protocols to abide by, etc. They've got no organizational preparedness to handle that, even if a lot of skilled people work there, atmosphere and teamwork's good, and their overall capacity's high.
When a player trains and acquires more skill, in part, it's like these storehouse operators are learning to adapt their process, instruments, storehouse itself, delivery routes etc., to function more effectively in terms of handling deliveries. In this case, the deliveries are informational inputs and the output consists of processing them onto adequate responses.
Not to say that's all but in general, the more effective, accurate, precise and stable that process is, the better the player.
The relevance of this is that, as more and more aspects of the discipline are internalized to the point of unconscious automation, inputs are being processed faster and faster. That's not due to more speed, as the cause. It's more due to simply better organization and process effectiveness, which naturally means better speed, as the effect.
For many inputs and combinations of inputs, over time, routes become pre-made. They don't need to be figured out again, save for minor details. In concept this is, more or less, how freeing up consciously available cognitive bandwidth occurs.
From the side of input processing, the relevance is that training habits to the point of unconscious automation enables raising frequency of focus shifts between priority tasks. That's because higher frequency of focus shifts between priority tasks means higher load of inputs per unit of time, and automation through training means that more inputs can be passed directly to the unconscious, with minimal conscious consideration.
In short, background habits (thinking, unconscious processes) increase the volume of inputs that can be effectively handled per unit of time.
From the side of input delivery, the relevance is that shifting focus between priority tasks in high frequency, while maintaining sense of order and clarity, background habits or unconscious execution increase the volume of inputs that are delivered properly to be processed.
This becomes hard to concisely describe in a format such as this but consider that an input also has quality. Both in terms of time (in sync, in the right moment, fairly stable intervals etc.), and in terms of space (no important details missed, no bloat of extraneous details, vividness, clarity of the sensory percept etc.). The term properly, refers to both spatial and temporal quality.
Both of these aspects participate in, and benefit from, unconscious integration of effective habits Attention habits are more about raising frequency of focus shifts (e.g. raising your apm, spamming etc., is more about that), processing habits are more about integrating mental models that automate recognizing builds and their timings, executing a build etc.
The point of the above is that conscious attention isn't just being freed up. Instead, unconscious habits refer both to processing of inputs, and to the delivery of inputs (to operating focus). Yes, you come to no longer consciously consider tasks as you've trained at them but many of these tasks are about shaping focus (input delivery), just as how many other habits are about processing tasks (input processing).
If these habits of shaping focus weren't there, you could have no trouble executing the build properly in terms of space, not getting confused, not missing anything etc. - but you would be unable to speed up effectively, since you'd have no real habits to sustain, synchronize, stabilize and shape (just to name a few aspects) higher frequency of focus shifts properly.
I've noted that multi-tasking's mostly a myth, single-tasking doesn't work. Many tasks, on the micro-scale especially, have downtime that adds up to huge values. Thus, when a player's able to shift focus back and forth between tasks, in very high frequency, they can do more than if they wasted that downtime on nothing.
More, in terms of mental tasks of checking, looking, tracking. Also more, in terms of executing relevant actions on time, such as sending units to a location, a worker to next building location etc.
It's neither multi-tasking, nor just single-tasking. It's singular focus that shifts back and forth between tasks, on the micro scale, with very high frequency.
The functional mechanism of focus, shifting between priority tasks in high frequency, also stands on the foundation of unconsciously integrated habits. To be executed properly, to produce high but proper, manageable frequency, speed modulations etc., it also relies on background processes, much like executing your build order without confusing or mixing things up does.
The entire point is this - it isn't that as you train, you build habits into unconscious and then you just automatically start getting faster because your conscious attention is freed up, and that conscious attention makes you faster. You get faster because you also train habits which shape and operate conscious attention.
Think about spamming. As you spam and spam and try to play as fast as you can in a lot of games, as a lot of players did and do, it becomes habitual. If you did not train at this, you might have issues where you "forget" to play fast a lot of the time. E.g., you find yourself having played slow for the past 5 minutes, despite clearly intending to play fast.
The subject of multi-tasking and single-tasking myths, deals with how the first mostly doesn't exist, the second doesn't work due to downtime, especially due to downtime of the tiniest of tasks (e.g. send probe, no need to watch it until the need occurs).
It also helps to reveal what does work - shifting focus between available areas of priority work in very high frequency, to maximize using all these windows of downtime effectively. Which is more or less what a starcraft pro does, as it builds advantages that make a huge difference.
How does that solve the puzzle of how background thinking (thinking fast) and unconscious habits play into that?
Thinking fast and thinking slow, unconscious background habits and conscious attention, conscious reasoning, the way these tie into that, is the following, more or less:
1) focus activities shape informational input deliveries and processing activities shape using input deliveries to generate adequate responses,
2) both of these aspects participate in, benefit from and are elevated by, unconscious integration and background thinking patterns developed in training,
3) both of these aspects intertwine and coalesce into one aspect, and that aspect is skill,
4) conscious attention is, very much so, freed up to do other things as layers of an art are integrated to the point of unconscious execution - however it is not responsible, on it's own, for playing faster nor does it automatically cause faster play,
5) it's very possible to still find oneself playing slowly a lot of times, even with all that conscious attention freed up, if the attention habits weren't trained - suddenly, player realizes he's been slow for the past 5 minutes despite intending to play fast,
6) playing faster doesn't occur from freed up conscious attention but from training speed habits (shifting focus in high frequency) - e.g. spamming apm, learning to spam looking on the supply data, learning to constantly look on the minimap while glancing at the current view etc. - with these habits getting trained a lot, over time, a player finds himself automatically not forgetting to play fast, to shift focus very frequently but with accuracy, relevance and precison, instead of using conscious attention to keep speeding himself up and reminding himself of these things consciously.
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On July 07 2020 01:17 maybenexttime wrote:While I agree with your description of multi-tasking, I think you're missing an important piece of the puzzle. We essentially use two different modes of thinking. One of them requires our attention and the other runs in the background. An important aspect of multi-tasking is moving many tasks from the former to the latter through practice. It's essentially the same process as learning to drive a car. Initially you need to consciously take care of everything. Eventually you start to develop habits, which frees up a lot of your attention. This is well described in a book I'm currently reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
In terms of StarCraft it seems like it is more conscious vs. unconscious rather than single focus shifting vs. multi-tasking. By the pure nature of the game you can not simultaneously manage two units at the exact same time.
For me the more interesting part has always been what can be done without consciously thinking about it. This is what makes watching top-level pros so fun, sometimes it feels like they precisely know what will happens. Especially the decisions regarding engaging a big enemy force in which they can predict how the battle is going to unfold. Above a certain threshold it is just a completely different game.
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Curious, what specifically do you mean by saying that it's conscious vs unconscious, more than single focus shifting vs multi-tasking?
As for what can be done without consciously thinking about it, this is reflective of the network of integrated chunks one has in a given domain. These chunks can be acquired and chained together through proper repetition. Then, a given chain of chunks can be consciously accessed and nothing more is required of the conscious.
When a chain of chunks is sufficiently entrained, it's as if you pressed a button, and the sequence of chunks performs nearly all the actions on its own. The conscious, then, doesn't have to participate, other than not interfering with what's unconsciously entrained.
Chunks are groups of neurons that have been entrained to handle a specific pattern. "Neurons that fire together, wire together" is the saying. A chunk is just a piece of skill or knowledge. Chunks can be 1) chained, 2) trained to the point of unconscious automation.
What a pro in any domain has, is a vast, accurate, effective network of interconnected chains of chunks and a more evolved navigational system to use them properly. A lot can be done with that. I agree that it's interesting.
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solution to reinforce multitask-tool is learning what makes it easy to figure out the advertities and start measuring how it goes on the practice them later put all the conclusions here, and hope for improvement.
start of action with many variables before focus and ordering a way to go back to the previous focus after every movement.
BUT HOW?
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Northern Ireland23280 Posts
Yeah interesting, a lot of moving parts too. A lot of experience too.
You mentally gauge that your harass force or whatever can kill the units facing it A-moving just based on experience and approximating, so you can shift to your other bases and tech structures, versus not having that instinctive idea and microing the whole battle.
It’s sequential prioritisation is Starcraft, and that instinctive knowledge helps a ton and juggling those things.
A great player can send drops around and have an internal timer as to when they’ll roughly arrived based on accumulated knowledge, ignore them for a bit and carry out building macro infrastructure or whatever, a player without that ingrained muscle memory might be continually checking or following the drops.
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Northern Ireland23280 Posts
I’m not even a terrible player, I haven’t really laddered in 7 years so I can’t even be counted as a player.
Watching games I can still do the mental calculus on who should win a fight pretty accurately.
Top tier pros can do that even better while sequencing that into what else they should be doing really quickly, pretty cool stuff.
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We have :
A first order of identified priorities that never changes (Contains the amount of already know task )
And a plan to to measure and understand properly the random ocurrences that can not be predicted, so we can understand better how to do it.
Hope to learn and share more, this subject is very productive and still clueless.Plan understand measures all
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Aside from the fact that "multitasking" actually doesn't exist, everyone gets what it refers to, more or less. Here's a method of practicing it. It's just a suggestion, not some perfect or one right method. If you like it, great, if not, you can try a different one. Method:
1) Relax.
2) R e l a x.
+ Show Spoiler +
I'm going to stress this point, if you're offended, don't read.
Bitch re-fucking-lax. For real. If you can't do that first, there's no point to further steps. Understand that you can do nothing well when you're getting tense or stressed or overly try-hard. There's no progress coming out of it. You just end up getting in your own way. Over and over and over. Then you end up judging or hating on yourself because it's not going "as well as it should". Then it's downward spiral that leads to shitty progress and big fucking nowhere in terms of getting
So. Relax.
Release tension. You must be chill about it to learn and perform well.
Right intensities don't come about from tensing up and forcing yourself hard. It comes the same way a good tennis serve comes about. When no unnecessary muscles are used, when only necessary muscles participate, when it comes from a point of relaxation, when you don't get in your own way, when the body can just perform as it knows best instead of being barraged by pointless instruction after pointless instruction after pointless instruction.
R E L A X.
You can't do shit if you're tense because being tense quite literally shuts down your brain, fluidity of motions and you can't perceive and process and execute with the required precision and fluency at all.
Everything gets slightly off, then even more off, then even more off. You''re soon all entangled, misaligned, you feel off-sync. It seems like this very rough, very exhausting activity.
And that's a total delusion. In terms of "multitasking", it reflects the way you're doing it, not the activity itself because there are other people who know how to do it properly and they don't experience such effects to such degrees. [/b]
being relaxed = one of the pre-conditions to play at very high speeds while not getting overly tired,
[/spoiler]
3) Clear your mind.
You can't have level 9/10 raging mental static going, or mental replaying of some past painful memory, or mental projecting into how you're going to feel after winning the match, or in 1 year from now when you'll be 2.5k MMR or GM, and do well.
With that shit in place, you can't pay attention. And this is hard, tricky, to really get. It's easy to get right every once in a while but clearing one's mind, at least for me, appears like something that can be exceedingly tricky and sometimes absurdly hard to do. Personally, even despite a ton of meditation experience, I still struggle with this a lot.
Nonetheless, it is a pre-requirement. Remember Stephano in the early days of SC 2? I remember how he'd look so serene and detached when playing, and even on the stage, how he'd mention exactly that in the interviews, clearing the mind.
With these two - relax & clear your mind, I think it's easy to test and see for oneself how important they are. I've noticed countless times that when I'm in the right state, multitasking is easy af and seems to come about naturally.
I've also noticed that no amount of energy and struggle and forcing and stressing and pushing and hard work and try-harding enables me to perform nearly as well when I'm tense or when my mind is unable to detach from putting attention on something else and keeps scattering away from the game.
4) Practice
Watch a vod and try to mimic. Play a few games trying to mimic. Rest a bit. Repeat. See if you feel you're getting faster. If not, try to review the reason and adjust. Keep providing yourself feedback and adjusting all the time. Keep it simple.
5) Don't get in your own way
There are thousands upon thousands of ways to work or perform in ways that make us defeat ourselves. A lot of unnecessary thinking or opinions or comments or judgements or mental chatter, a lot of unnecessary motions that cancel out the necessary motions, a lot of necessary motions not done or missed, a lot of tension preventing proper performance, a lot imbalances due to misguided or wrong or erroneous sign posts to high performance. In short, all kinds of ways of diminishing one's performance due to poor coordination and lack of integrity in the approach to improving.
Most of people habitually choose, or even vehemently promote choosing, many of the above, self-defeating patterns of improving.
I don't really know how to resolve that issue. What I do know is that it's probably a more individual thing, and it relies heavily on the individual being able to properly assess what will work for them and what will not, and keep away what doesn't work.
What I do know, is that whatever you're doing, not getting in your own way is one of the most important themes. If you can do just that - you can already do so much more than the vast majority of people. It's not easy to not get in your own way, in general. There's plenty of reasons for that. The point is very simple, if that is not figured out, then it doesn't make sense to progress further. You'll just be ending up self-defeating.
If you can avoid that, you'll be more or less well-coordinated and that's obviously a huge boost to, both in learning and in actual performance.
The most important thing, as for example Garry Kasparov mentions in his talk "How to reach your potential" (can check on youtube, it's amazing, on of my favorites of all time), is the continuity of improvement. Whatever you're doing, it needs to satisfy that criterion well. If it doesn't, it's not working.
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EPT
