Multitasking Is A Myth
by Miki SaxonI’ve been written a lot about multitasking because I’ve never believed in it and today I have yet more proof that it just doesn’t work.
Not my opinion, but brain science done on focus and concentration.
Winifred Gallagher, author of Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, a guide by to the science of paying attention, says, “Multitasking is a myth. You cannot do two things at once. The mechanism of attention is selection: it’s either this or it’s that.”
Whatever you choose to focus on, whether consciously or not, your mind will tune the rest out.
You’ve experienced this yourself. Think about the last time you were on the phone; how long was the lag time was between your words and the response? How apropos was the response or did the person ask you to repeat what you said?
Chances are the person you were talking with was checking email, tweeting, surfing or one of a myriad of other actions.
Or does this describe you in a conversation?
Gallagher says that “People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money,” and, like money, you need to decide consciously what you want to spend it on and budget accordingly.
So stop multitasking and start living; as the old Alka-Seltzer ad goes—try it, you’ll like it.
Image credit: Daquella manera on flickr
May 10th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Miki,
This post should be required reading by everyone.
I have always defined multitasking as, “doing several things at once–none of them well.”
May 10th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Good definition, Bob, but I’m afraid that our thinking represents a very tiny minority.
May 14th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I used to believe I was good at “multi-tasking” since in health care it is rare that you are allowed the luxury of concentrating on a single task until completion. Now I’ve come to realize it always was a myth that anyone can multitask well. I think you have to be hit with a bad consequence before you realize that it really can’t be done day after day.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Julie, you’re one of smart ones. Everyday I have people telling me how good they are at multitasking; how it’s the only way to go, blah, blah. I send them links to studies and research proving that multitasking yields poor quality work. They don’t stop doing it, but they do stop telling me how wrong I am.
May 29th, 2012 at 1:17 am
[…] have proved over and over that human brains can’t multitask and that doing so reduces competency on all tasks; of even more concern is reduced productivity. […]