I love to brag about my ability to multitask. I think I can sit on Facebook while working, listening to music, and eating a sandwich. I think that by tackling two tasks at once, I’m being twice as productive.
Research shows that the more you’re multitasking, the less you’re able to pay attention, to filter out irrelevant information and increase the number of mistakes you make.
Whenever you need to pay attention, an area toward the front of the brain called the prefrontal cortex springs to action. This area, which spans the left and right sides of the brain, is part of the brain’s motivational system. It helps to focus your attention on a goal and coordinates messages with other brain systems to carry out the task.
While the right and left sides of the prefrontal cortex work together when focused on a single task, the sides work independently when people attempt to perform two tasks at once.
Etienne Koechlin, who led the study, says:
«The simultaneous processing of tasks requiring attention is so tough on the brain, often, when we multitask, the brain switches attention back and forth between activities. Such task-switching “comes at a cost in performance” ».
In case you needed another reason to close the 20 extra browser tabs you have open, Clifford Nass, a communication professor at Stanford, has provided major motivation for monotasking, says:
«. . . We have scales that allow us to divide up people into people who multitask all the time and people who rarely do, and the differences are remarkable. People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They can’t manage a working memory. They’re chronically distracted».
When we multitask all day, those scattered habits literally change the pathways in our brains. The consequence, according to Nass’s research, is that sustaining your attention becomes impossible.
The sad irony is that multitaskers are actually less able to multitask than the rest of us because, as Nass explains, they can’t help but think about what they aren’t doing! He argues that this inability to process information effectively makes managers less thoughtful and therefore more inclined to exercise poor judgment
But it gets worse: multitaskers have problems with social interactions, they tend to be socially and emotionally immature.
Nass points out that corporate policies encouraging media multitasking—those that require people to respond to all emails in a matter of minutes, keep team members’ chat windows open, and use personal cell phones for work purposes—actually impair the ability of employees to do their jobs and, in particular, to work effectively in teams.
«Not try to do everything. Do one thing well» — Steve Jobs
I discovered that the opposite of multitasking is to work with mindfulness. Mindfulness means paying attention to one thing at a time, calming the mind and training the brain to focus despite the constant stream of thought and distractions. The benefits of mindfulness training include reduced cognitive stress, improved emotional stability.
So do yourself a favor and stop believing in the power of multitasking and re-learning how to concentrate. Do you want to, or not?
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