Imagine being in the midst of responding to an email while talking on the phone and faxing your client, when momentarily you forget who you’re writing, talking and faxing to? The rapid pace of information constantly assaulting our brains today is making it harder to pay full attention to any one thing. Our laptops, PDAs and instant messages pressure us into quick responses that force us to sacrifice detail and accuracy. We get our news and information in snippits on the Internet, communicate in shorthand with our friends and work associates and many people are replacing depth and subtlety in their thinking with quick mental facts that may only skim the surface.
Though multitasking often makes us feel like we are getting more done when we divide our attention, we are not necessarily being more efficient. Studies show that when our brains switch back and forth from one task to another, our neural circuits take a small break in between – a time-consuming process that reduces efficiency. It’s not unlike closing down one computer program and booting up another – it takes a few moments.
Neuroscientists have found that we lose time during these switches, especially when a mental task is new or unfamiliar. Psychologist David Meyer and colleagues at the University of Michigan studied brain efficiency when volunteers quickly switch their mental workouts from identifying shapes to solving math problems. Both tasks take longer than they normally would, and mental accuracy declines when the volunteers are required to make attention shifts compared to when they focus on only one task for an extended period. Switching back and forth between the two tasks may decrease brain efficiency by as much as 50 percent, compared to separately completing one task before starting another one. The bottom line is that the brain seems to work better when implementing a single sustained task than when multitasking, despite most people’s perception that they are doing more and at a faster pace when they multitask.
Some particular combinations of tasks, however, do appear to improve mental efficiency. Many people notice improved cognitive abilities when they perform a task while also listening to music. Music appears to enhance the efficiency of those who work with their hands – including surgeons. Music and manual tasks activate completely different parts of the brain; thus, effective multitasking sometimes appears to involve disparate brain regions. However, if you are working while listening to music you do not like, it can be distracting and decrease your efficiency.
Multitasking has become a necessary skill of modern life, but we need to acknowledge the challenges and adapt accordingly. Several strategies can help, such as striving to stay on one task longer, and avoiding task switching whenever possible. We can also learn and build multitasking skills with practice. Consider your own tendency to multitask . . . do you feel it increases your efficiency or do you find that it leads to more mistakes?
Gary Small, M.D., and Gigi Vorgan
Los Angeles, CA
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Comments: 5
I spent my whole childhood learning to sit still and concentrate, and now every job listing has 'multitasking' as a required skill. It reveals how out of touch HR people and managers are with what it takes to get a job done.
Your points really hit on how the habit of multitasking keeps us from connecting with others face-to-face. How many times have we been in a conversation with someone who glances down at their PDA to check an incoming text message? It makes us feel like what we have to say is not as interesting as a string of letters on a hand-held device. Perhaps we need an updated version of Emily Post's rules of etiquette to help us cope with the new technology in social situations.
I believe that there is significant sociology involved here as well. Many of us spend the bulk of our time engaged in some kind of work – exchanging time, attention, and effort for money. Increasingly this work has been governed by a set of platitudinous aphorisms like “do more with less” and “it only has to be good enough”. Edwards Deming warned against the dangers of management by slogans – I believe in the 1940’s. In too many workplaces these slogans take the place of real goals. The result, we try to fill our days with – ultimately ineffective - activity to distract ourselves from work. Alfie Kohn said for many working persons, work the punishment that stands between them and their paycheck.
It seems to me that we have to think about the future of our work and our workplace. The mixture of the current economic situation, revelations about work such as Gallup’s finding that more than 70% of workers are disengaged at their workplace, and the disturbing number of people turning to an increasing array of antidepressants to make it through the day seem to be a loud-and-clear indication that it’s time for a major social shift.