Unitasking By Jacobs

Today’s piece by A.J. Jacobs was another weird article, which I guess is part of the way he has made a name of himself as a writer. The subject matter of this article was the art of multi-tasking, or making it appear that you are multi-tasking. He starts the article with a personal account of how multi-tasking can be bad for our health, in the most literal way, by being a distraction and potentially causing us to drive into oncoming traffic. He relates to the other article we read by him, in that technology has aided in societies obsession with multi-tasking. It adds a personal aspect to the writing because even as I read this I found myself distracted by many things such as my phone, food and the internet. Additionally he uses a personal tone, as if he is speaking directly to the audience, in many of his example of how easily he gets distracted during everyday things. Jacobs also uses real life facts and experts to demonstrate how multitasking is harmful to our lives. He references a recent UCLA study in that multitasking essentially “rots your skull” by causing tit to constantly switch tasks. However, he also reveals to the audience that no matter how much training and focus he uses, multitasking is inevitable. While attending a meditation class to improve his mental strength, he recalls how during one meditation exercise on of his fellow students breathed like “Darth Vader. With asthma. During heavy foreplay”, which really caught my attention. He reinforces his belief by ended the article how he began, he started by being a distracted driver and ends the story with him going off on a tangent about his son want to play mini golf, which he began during a story about his first experience driving in two years. The structure of his article drives in his point of “uni-tasking” by being separated into sections. I assume the sections made it easier for him to sort his information and reflects how it can be helpful, it made it easier for me to read the long article.