It’s not a “random on the internet” but what science has proved (“The research is almost unanimous, which is very rare in social science”). The article I quoted is but one of many that conclude the same thing. I can post a long list of references if you are genuinely interested.
Also did you miss the bit where they showed that people who rate themselves as good at multitasking actually aren’t?
That’s why we have science - to objectively measure and quantitatively analyse phenomena, rather than rely on self-belief, gut-feel and perceptions. It’s how climate change was proved, despite many people thinking that their own perception of the climate in a small number of locations and over short timeframes is sufficient to disprove it. And yes, it’s entirely possible the CDF have been doing it wrong all this time, if they are ignoring relevant research.
The contractors who have been directly and materially affected by this are unlikely to be laughing this off as a “storm in a teacup”.
The social science theories and technicalities are irrelevant to this discussion. We are talking real life experience and examples that any reasonable person would label “multitasking” and how they relate to Musk, not writing a psychological research paper.
In the example of the jet at 200ft, 600kts in formation at night, there are at least a dozen mission critical functions which are being carried out simultaneously by the one dude in the cockpit, 4 or 5 of which will kill him in less than a second if they are missed.
Yes, some of those are passive/cerebral and truly being conducted simultaneously while some are active/physical tasks that are cycled through in fractions of a second on a continual basis. To any reasonable person they are all examples of multitasking.
There is a reason we are screened before entering such roles both psychologically and physically for the ability to multitask and I would suggest that this is not even remotely one of the toughest metrics that knock people out of the running, suggesting that most people have the ability to various degrees, while some certainly thrive in such environments.
This is a rather extreme example to make the point, however as
@Quickst pointed out above almost every person engages in levels of multitasking every single day. Even in current more strategic roles far removed from flying as I am today, I still am constantly multitasking as that is where I am most productive and looking back on my career both in private sectors and military that has always been the case.
Bringing it back to the topic from the irrelevant and extreme technical dissection of the word multitasking, it is very clear that Musk certainly falls into this category of high performing individual who works better when conducting multiple tasks. You’ve only got to look at his history with SpaceX still in the fledging stage, crashing rockets left and right, while he was turning around the actual train wreck that Tesla was at the time simultaneously along with a number of other tasks that would swamp the average person.
Is he perfect? Hell no. He’s clearly on the spectrum, a fact that is completely blown out of proportion though by commentators and the smarter than Elon crowd. If you look at the moves he has made, they often do look random when viewed in the single dimension of the four dimensional chess board, based on only a small part of the picture, massively obscured by rumour and innuendo largely perpetrated by vested interests and those who think it’s fashionable to play to the smarter than Elon disease.
In the cases where the complete picture eventually emerges and all the smoke clears though, those ‘random moves’ actually turn out to be extremely strategic plays where he was 6 or 7 steps ahead of everyone else. Despite this happening time and time again the same crowd always bleat off and make fools of themselves based on the 1% of the board they think they see through the haze of all the BS and FUD.
To suggest that there is anyone better to lead Tesla at this point is complete lunacy. He is precisely the unique ‘wartime CEO’ needed to achieve the mission they have set out to achieve. A paper pushing ‘conventional’ CEO would be more likely to lead Tesla to fall into the history books at this point, certainly I would give zero chance at achieving any of the goals they have set.
Would I want to work for him? At this stage in my life, almost certainly not, at least at executive levels. He clearly works at an extreme level of high energy and expects the same, I’m no psychologist but I would say that this is not sustainable long term. Going back to my example there is also a reason it’s very rare to have more than 4 or 5 years at a time in an operational fighter squadron. Simplifying things a little here, but there is such a thing as a ‘shelf life’ for individuals in extremely high performance roles and there are advantages to constantly bringing new blood in. I’m very surprised that some of the recent executive level departures were able to perform at those levels for so long.
While at an individual level this is something that is not sustainable, at the mission and company level as has been proven time and time again this is the only way they continue to move at the pace they have and the only way they would ever stand a chance of achieving the goals and mission they have set out to achieve in this lifetime.
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