The myths of multitasking

In modern times, hurry, bustle, and agitation have become a regular way of life for many people—so much so that we have even coined a word to describe our efforts to respond to the many pressing demands on our time: multitasking. Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible.

While multitasking has become pervasive in our society, it does not mean it is a good thing. It is fed by a number of myths that need to be dispelled.

Myth 1: multitasking is efficient. Actually it is not.When you multitask, you may think you are getting a lot done, but there's a cost when the tasks compete for the same (and limited) cognitive resources (e.g., attention, working memory) and draw on the same brain circuitry. This is true, no matter how good you think you are at multitasking. There's just too much competition for the same neural circuits and what you end up with is a compromise. Neither task is performed as well as it is when performed alone.

Multitasking messes with the brain in several other ways as well. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we’re supposed to be concentrating on. Even worse, certain studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction thus prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos may merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may well cause it to atrophy.

Research now shows that multitasking may actually lead to lower productivity. It seems that e-mail, instant messaging, cell phones, and personal digital assistants (PDAs), which keep us all connected and allow many of us to do our jobs, can instead diminish productivity. A study by Basex, Inc., a knowledge-management research firm in New York, reported that knowledge workers waste an average of two hours a day due to interruptions from e-mails, co-workers, and cell phones. Another study found that workers took an average of twenty-five minutes to recover from interruptions such as phone calls or answering e-mail and return to their original task. This recovery time from each interruption comes with a stiff price tag for the American economy: $650 billion every year.

Myth 2: women are better multitaskers than men. The conventional wisdom is that women are better at multitasking than men. Unfortunately despite research, this is not validated by data.

Myth 3: multitasking is safe and efficient. Numerous studies have shown the sometimes-fatal danger of using cell phones and other electronic devices while driving. In the business world, where concerns about time-management are perennial, warnings about workplace distractions spawned by a multitasking culture are on the rise. In 2005, a research study by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”

So multitasking is neither efficient nor safe. Indeed it comes with a price- premature aging and lowered IQ. This is the great irony of multitasking—that its overall goal, getting more done in less time, turns out to be chimerical. In reality, multitasking slows our thinking. It forces us to chop competing tasks into pieces, set them in different piles, then hunt for the pile we’re interested in, pick up its pieces, review the rules for putting the pieces back together, and then attempt to do so, often quite awkwardly. This state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being. When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention. People who have achieved great things often credit for their success a finely honed skill for paying attention. When asked about his particular genius, Isaac Newton responded that if he had made any discoveries, it was “owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.” Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”