I once worked with a mathematician in a research group who said, "Multitasking destroys me". I did not know what he meant at the time, but I do now.
If your job is to be "on the bottom of things" doing careful calculations and designs, you should not multitask. But if your job is to be "on top of things", then you will have to.
Can't mix the two safely.
You do not want the engineer/architect calculating the load on a beam to be checking email, on slack, answering the phone and other "on top of things" tasks.
But some managers think you are a slacker if you are not running around with your hair on fire at all times. They don't understand the difference.
And I’m fairly sure I would perform much better at university if the courses were exactly the same, just serial. I really like getting to the very depth of an interesting subject, but doing a few hours a week of one will simply kill my brain. As soon as it finds it interesting, it has to context switch to the next one.
Education disruption: Serial University where you can take a course at a time, spending all your available time on that course, completing the work in much less than a quarter or semester if you like. Graduation from SU should result in a degree or it's no better than every other self-study option available at the moment.
That is an interesting way to describe it and makes a lot of sense. One thing that I see discussed a lot is a question of value. Engineers message each other across the day lots of times and it causes the same multitasking issues and break of concentration for "bottom of things". However, sometimes that may unblock two other engineers for several days of productive work. This is where structure matters. Having a tech lead that can handle all these interruptions is ideal but it takes someone who can balance the managing and the execution. It is also the mark of a good manager; someone who understands that their success is actually to make everyone else successful and that means shielding them from the nonsense.
If your job is to be "on the bottom of things" doing careful calculations and designs, you should not multitask. But if your job is to be "on top of things", then you will have to.
Can't mix the two safely.
You do not want the engineer/architect calculating the load on a beam to be checking email, on slack, answering the phone and other "on top of things" tasks.
But some managers think you are a slacker if you are not running around with your hair on fire at all times. They don't understand the difference.