The Unitasker

The author who calls himself the Unitasker, A.J. Jacobs, partakes in an excruciating experiment for many various reasons.  Most of all, he is motivated to focus better after a dangerous car accident caused by multitasking.  This would be considered his main exigence for performing this experiment.  The accident allowed him to think further about his life and his daily actions.  Aside from his personal motivation, he is also interested in giving the audience an idea of what it is like to focus on one thing at a time.  His purpose is to take the audience on an adventure to hopefully learn the same very important things that he learned throughout his experiment.  In the context of this specific chapter, the audience would likely be the same people who are interested in A.J. Jacobs’ books or interested in life experiments in general.  It is very possible that the readers are reading the chapter while participating in another activity, whether it be exercising, eating, or talking.  In this particular scenario, the audience could be a group of multitaskers.

               This experiment is one of many for A.J. Jacobs so it is likely that the reader would have a good reason to believe what he or she is reading.  Jacobs builds up credibility or ethos through conducting multiple different experiments in his life and presenting them in this book.  Also, A.J. Jacobs is a fairly well-known author who has written many different works, including many articles published in Esquire.  The moment that people see a name they recognize when reading a piece of literature, they give the author a distinct level of credibility.  Additionally, the mention of the horrific car accident which triggered this experiment gives the audience a firm reason to believe that Jacobs is writing with a solid purpose.  Once again, this adds to his ethos and makes the experiment more meaningful for the audience. 

               Although Jacobs does include brief instances of statistical research, much of his information comes from his own personal accounts.  For example, he brings up a study regarding Baboons and a UCLA study relating to multitasking.  All of this support intertwined within the timeline of Jacobs’ experiment helps create a strong argument.  Structurally, the chapter is very solid and Jacobs even ends with a coda (written on a typewriter), which relays the results of the experiment back to the reader so the reader can learn what Jacobs has learned.