"The Unitasker" Analysis

            In A.J. Jacobs’ chapter “The Unitasker,” the reader is introduced to a challenging experiment that the author endeavors on after a terrifying car accident. Due to multitasking and almost getting his family killed, Jacobs decides to become a unitasker, or a person who does one thing at a time. This could be considered his exigence for why he would take on being a unitasker. The purpose of this chapter is to educate his audience about the values he learned and to take life one step at a time. By paying attention to one thing at a time, he is able to focus on the task and be more efficient in getting it done fully instead of getting distracted by something else. Even though he struggles with this, he eventually does a very good job of focusing on doing one thing at a time.  His targeted audience is a group of multitaskers who probably fall into the same problems that he faced before his experiment. By showing this personal experiment, he wants to try to convince his audience to not be big multitaskers.

            Jacobs establishes ethos because of the experiments that he conducts.  He develops this personal connection with his audience that makes the audience believe what he iterates. A.J. Jacobs has also been published in Esquire magazine which also helps establish his credibility. It is likely that his audience has read some of his previous articles which could allow him to get this experiment out to a larger audience. He establishes pathos through his tragic car accident. This makes his readers feel gloomy when he discusses what lead up to the accident. By telling this story, he might convince more of his readers to stop multitasking.

            The structure of this chapter is broken up into sections, making it much more appealing than a large chapter. Each section breaks up a chunk of his experiment allowing for his audience to not be overwhelmed by the information that he receives from his experiment. It also makes it more appealing to the reader. Breaking it up into parts, encourages his readers to “unitask” instead of reading and doing something completely unrelated. This chapter seemed to really create a strong argument for Jacobs and the coda at the end nicely sums up his experiment.