GTD: Concurrency reduces productivity

Posted on | September 10, 2008 | No Comments

Years ago while I was doing my undergraduate degree, I was sitting in a classroom talking about “Computer Architecture.” I remember the day we were discussing about concurrent programming, and what actually happen at a CPU given concurrent codes. The take away was simple: unless if there are a lot of passive waiting, concurrent programming does not really increase the total throughput. It actually decreases productivity because of the resources needed to swap contexts.

May I deduce a simple conjecture… For human, concurrency (a.k.a multi-tasking) simply destroys productivity.

Human brain is not capable to swap contexts that fast. The more you multi-task yourself, the less productive you are. Unless, just like the conjecture for cpu, if you have to wait a long time to finish some tasks. Only then multi-tasking may give you productivity.

Personally, today this is conjecture pertains very much to what I am doing. I was trying to accomplish many things in (pseudo) parallel, but absolutely nothing gets done.

I paused and wrote this blog post just to slap myself in the cheek (the other one..). I knew all this, I should have done better…

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