CONCURRENT TASK INTERFERENCE
Either one alone is manageable. Neither can be put down.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which two demands that each fit within a person's capacity do not fit within it together, and the circumstances that produced one are the circumstances that produced the other.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
MISSING
Nothing says which of the two is expected to give way.
TIME PRESSURE
HIGH
The circumstance producing both is the one that makes neither able to wait.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
ASYMMETRIC
Dropping either one fails, and the two failures are not comparable.
OPERATOR STATE
CONCURRENT
The person is holding both and that is the condition itself.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
MEDICALOne clinician carries a procedure and a monitoring duty that were each sized alone.
ENERGYOne operator holds both a switching sequence and the board that reports it.
LOGISTICSOne controller runs a movement and answers the calls the movement generates.
MANUFACTURINGOne person tends a machine and records what tending it produces.
PUBLIC SERVICEOne officer conducts an interview and completes the record of it at the same time.
CONSTRUCTIONOne supervisor directs work and maintains the checks that the work requires.
04 WHERE THIS IS SURFACING
This surfaces wherever a role combines duties that were sized separately. Each was reasonable when it was specified, and they arrive together because the same thing causes both.
The question it keeps returning to is which of two necessary things may be made to wait — deciding in advance means deciding without the situation, and deciding in the moment means deciding while doing both badly.