This article pigeonholes you into the idea that long term focus on a single task is the only form of productivity.
Not all jobs are the same. When I'm writing, I block everything out but the writing prompt, occasionally backing out to open up character/location/backstory notes. When I'm writing a bash or python script, I do much the same. Full screen my terminal, open up vi, and don't leave it until I'm done or have other matters to attend to. And the same with when I'm learning something - I have my study materials, and that's it. (Though, I'm weird and still prefer physical books for learning stuff, so I might not have a computer near me at all, despite "pleasure" reading being almost 100% done on my kindle)
But most of the time I'm on the job, I am not sitting there with singular focus on one window. I'm not a professional author or developer. Multitasking - whether or not humans are good at it - makes up a huge portion of my day to day time. I have the general projects I have to work on, but I'm also an escalation point - I have to keep an eye on IRC and see if anyone needs me, or has questions about anything. I have to keep my eye on my email for similar reasons. I have to be signed in to our other office communication systems that other departments use in case they need to get ahold of me, or connect me with a customer. etc etc etc. For me, being productive much of the time precisely means I need to be bouncing my focus all over the place and be juggling multiple things at once.
I get the overall point, and agree with it for many cases, but there are plenty of jobs out there where having a lot of different information feeds presented to you at once is part of how you attain productivity.
Not all jobs are the same. When I'm writing, I block everything out but the writing prompt, occasionally backing out to open up character/location/backstory notes. When I'm writing a bash or python script, I do much the same. Full screen my terminal, open up vi, and don't leave it until I'm done or have other matters to attend to. And the same with when I'm learning something - I have my study materials, and that's it. (Though, I'm weird and still prefer physical books for learning stuff, so I might not have a computer near me at all, despite "pleasure" reading being almost 100% done on my kindle)
But most of the time I'm on the job, I am not sitting there with singular focus on one window. I'm not a professional author or developer. Multitasking - whether or not humans are good at it - makes up a huge portion of my day to day time. I have the general projects I have to work on, but I'm also an escalation point - I have to keep an eye on IRC and see if anyone needs me, or has questions about anything. I have to keep my eye on my email for similar reasons. I have to be signed in to our other office communication systems that other departments use in case they need to get ahold of me, or connect me with a customer. etc etc etc. For me, being productive much of the time precisely means I need to be bouncing my focus all over the place and be juggling multiple things at once.
I get the overall point, and agree with it for many cases, but there are plenty of jobs out there where having a lot of different information feeds presented to you at once is part of how you attain productivity.