Multitasking - the Myth
Multitasking – the Myth
Recent studies have dropped some sobering information on us about the effects of multitasking on your brain and your career. The brain is not equipped to take on multiple tasks that require thinking at the same time. In working on two tasks simultaneously, the brain must shut down the first task before switching to the second task. Task switching comes at a cost in health and performance. The switching drains our brain and we feel tired much more quickly. This fatigue results in people eating more and drinking more caffeine. Additional effects of multitasking take their toll on the brain by not allowing it to recover from all of the stimuli coming in on a daily basis. This results in:
Lack of focus
Memory impairment
Increase in stress levels
And the cost to businesses comes to $650 billion a year in lack of job performance and creativity
These losses have been known for awhile. Now, however, people are blasted with electronic information every day. Those who regularly use their electronic devices (who doesn’t) have difficulty paying attention, recalling information, or even switching from one task to another as those who complete one task at a time.
“Gloria Mark, professor in the department of informatics at the University of California, Irvine says that when people are interrupted, it typically takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to return to their work, and most people will do intervening tasks before going back to their original project. This switching leads to a build up of stress, she says, and so little wonder people who have high rates of neuroticism, impulsivity, and are susceptible to stress, tend to switch tasks more often than others.” (Olivia Goldhill, qz.com)
Stanford researchers looked at a group of heavy multitaskers who felt that this practice helped their performance. The results of the study found that those who believed that multitasking helped their performance actually were worse at multitasking than the group who performed one task at a time. What happened to result in such poor performance? The multitaskers had more difficulty organizing their thoughts, filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower in task switching. It turns out that multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain doesn’t do a good job task switching. When you are trying to do two tasks at one time, your brain lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully according to the Stanford researchers.
Dr. Claudia Aguirre writes “that even simple tasks are liable to produce a kind of interference when performed simultaneously.” Psychological Refractory Period is the phenomenon which occurs when two tasks are performed at the same time. The reaction time to one of the tasks is delayed because of the presence of the other task. (Dr. Claudia Aquirre, Huffington Post)
Now the news gets even worse! Multitasking can actually lower your IQ. A study at the University of London found that those who multitasked during cognitive functions dropped their IQ scores by 15 points. This drop put them in the same level as an 8 – year old. Consider if you were writing an email to your boss while involved in a meeting. As the researchers so delicately put it – you might as well have an 8–year old write your email. That would put you on the fast-track for success!
Let’s go a little farther with the bad news. Researchers at the University of Sussex in the UK did imaging studies on multitaskers comparing the amount of time they spend on multiple devices (e.g. texting and watching TV) to MRI scans of their brains. What they found was disturbing. Multitaskers’ brains showed lower brain density in the anterior cingulate part of the brain. This region is responsible for empathy, cognitive and emotional control. More studies need to be done to prove if these results are valid. However, the study’ lead author, Kep Kee Loh, explained that an awareness must be made that the way we are interacting with electronic devices may change the way we think and these changes might be happening within the brain structure.
All of this research indicates that multitasking harms your work performance but also goes on to support the fact that you may actually be damaging a region of the brain that is crucial to future career success. Nobody wins with multitasking.
References:
Aguirre,C. Multitasking and the brain. Retrieved April 12, 2017 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-claudia-aguirre/multitasking-and-the-brain_b_7280664.html
Bradberry, T. (March 27, 2015). Multitasking can damage your brain and career, studies say. Retrieved April 2, 2015 from http://entrepreneur.com/article/244376
Goldhill,O. Neuroscientists say multitasking literally drains the energy reserves of your brain. Retrieved April 12, 2017 from https://qz.com/722661/neuroscientists-say-multitasking-literally-drains-the-energy-reserves-of-your-brain/