Analysis Of Being The Person Your Dog Thinks You Are By Jim Davies

Most people are guilty of multitasking and often people do not even realize they are doing it. Since society is constantly made to keep a productive life, multitasking seems almost essential. Online shopping during a boring lecture and watching television while doing classwork are examples of multitasking. However, most people who are guilty of multitasking do not realize that they are actively affecting their productivity. People think by multitasking you are being more productive, but Jim Davies explains otherwise. The concept of multitasking was briefly touched upon by Professor Davies in class, but this concept was further explained and developed in Jim Davies’ book, ‘Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are.’ When a person does more than

Our brains recognize multitasking as a reward, this is because when people multitask, they are experiencing a dopamine rush, during this dopamine rush you are actively training your brain to enjoy being distracted (Davies, 2021). In class, Professor Davies gives the example of, reading a text message while having a conversation, as most people would believe this is multitasking, this example actually explains rapid task switching. In the book, Jim Davies mentions often when people talk about multitasking, they really are referring to rapid task switching, which was briefly mentioned in ‘Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are.’ Rapid task switching was further explained in the lecture by Professor Davies when your mind is focused on one task then another task then back and so on. Rapid task switching has a few consequences, one being task switching costs. This means every time you switch a task to another, your mind is now playing catch up. In the lecture, Professor Davies mentioned this happens because your working memory must clear itself every time you switch tasks and put new tasks in your working memory, this causes interference between ‘old’

Jim Davies explains in the book that many people multitask for simple reasons, like serving an emotional need to be happy. An example given in the book explains a student’s studying becomes boring and depressing and an emotional need to become happier is provoked. The student turns on music to achieve his emotional need for happiness and continues to study, even though his studying is less effective while listening to music; this is because multitasking attempts to gratify multiple needs subconsciously (Davies, 2021). Once a person experiences immediate pleasure from multitasking, these behaviours become reinforced, and your productivity drops immensely. Multitasking can become more frequent due to conditioning as explained by Jim Davies in the book. Conditioning is when a person associates an action with a pleasure response, the link between the action that caused the instant pleasure reinforces the action in future. Meaning a person is more likely to repeat the action that was reinforced by self-distracting behaviours like studying while listening to music (Davies, 2021). This causes a continuous cycle of repeating past actions to achieve instant gratification and therefore affects one’s ability to truly stay focused on a task and be productive. It is believed that multitasking helps us stay on track, but Professor Davies