Think you can do it all with expert multitasking skills? Recent studies show that your brain can’t.
By Kristen L. Phiel, MS Freelance Medical Writer
Eight new projects in the inbox all due next week? No problem. Just dust off your superhero cape and jump in the nearest phone booth. You can do it with your highly practiced and polished multitasking skills. But can you really? Come back to earth–recent studies show your brain can’t handle it all at once.
Yes, it is true that some activities can be effectively multitasked. For example, certain motor-control activities like riding a bike or walking on the treadmill lend themselves easily to other activities like thinking about a presentation you have to make or studying for an exam (make sure it is a stationary bike for the latter one). Or maybe you are sitting in the dullest meeting ever; you can probably clear you inbox from you Blackberry while the speaker drones on.
But are you really listening to the speaker at the same time you are reading email and being effective at both skills? There are clearly tasks that are not suited to multitasking. You don’t want to be thinking about your presentation while you are having an intimate moment with your spouse, or texting while driving, both or which can be a very dangerous combination. How about talking on the phone and emailing at the same time? No problem you say – I do it every day. Well what you are really doing is jumping back and forth between the two tasks. Just like you are tuning in and out to the speaker in your meeting in between each email. The difference is your really don’t need to hear everything the speaker is saying, but you might for an effective phone conversation.
The truth is you may think you are multitasking but you are really focusing attention from one task to the other because your brain can’t process two high-level cognitive things at the same time. Experts call this oscillating between tasks or sequential processing. And our brain even with attempted training can’t handle multitasking. When you try and do two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating between them, errors go up and it takes longer–often double or more time–to accomplish the tasks compared to when we do the tasks sequentially.
And studies have shown that not only can we not multitask well, multitasking can cause some problems in the long run. For adults, this may be stress, and all its negative side effects, and forgetfulness. In children, studies have shown that kids who practice multitasking (ex. Studying while watching TV, talking on the phone and texting with friends) are less likely to learn good problem solving skills or to learn effectively. This multitasking behavior may be preventing them from focusing on complex problems and developing the skills they need to solve them.
But let’s face it, multitasking is here to stay. Here are some tips to navigate the daily multitasking crunch:
- Be selective about what you multitask. Take a deep breath and focus on what needs to get done first. Give complex or important tasks the attention they need.
- Take time at the beginning or end of each day to decide what you need to accomplish and remind yourself of these tasks as the multitasking frenzy ensues. Put aside all but the most important emails or phone calls until you are through the most important tasks.
- Try and streamline tasks that you do frequently. Set up email filters or skim through reports.
- Remember there is a difference between getting a job done and getting a job done well. It may not be quantity, but quality that bring success. Set yourself (or your employees) up to succeed.
