The Effects of Multitasking
Multitasking wastes more time than we think.
I had this terrible habit once of having at least 30+ tabs open on my web browser, always having a YouTube video playing in the background, while messaging people on Facebook. It used to make me feel productive because I was working on a dozen different things at the same time, while I was listening to an educational podcast in the background.
But in reality, I was barely making progress in any of those individual tasks. One task would dominate (usually the Facebook messaging), while the others were neglected.
Although multitasking may feel good, in reality it is more counterproductive than is it productive. We are not actually doing multiple things at once, but rather, we are doing a little bit of everything in quick succession. These little bits of activity unfortunately do not add up, as we would like to think.
Every time we switch tasks, it usually takes some time before we are fully engaged again in any single activity. But when we multitask, we never really allow ourselves to become fully engaged. According to Daniel Levitin, professor of behavioral neuroscience at McGill University:
“That switching comes with a biological cost that ends up making us feel tired much more quickly than if we sustain attention on one thing,”
This of course has negative consequences:
“People eat more, they take more caffeine. Often what you really need in that moment isn’t caffeine, but just a break. If you aren’t taking regular breaks every couple of hours, your brain won’t benefit from that extra cup of coffee.”
Of course, not all multitasking is bad. Certain tasks are simple enough that you can do two things at once, such as doing the laundry and reading a book, says Hal Pashler, psychology professor at UC San Diego. But when you try to do two challenging things at the same time, it doesn’t work.
So how do you avoid this? A good start is to limit the amount of tabs you have open at a given time. Instead of trying to read a dozen articles at the same time, save them all for later and focus on only one article. You can read more on this here and here.
When working on a given task, focus only on that task, and avoid doing other things at the same time. It may be tempting to have a video playing in the background, but try to limit this just to familiar music, or at the very least something that does not require a lot of attention.
Levetin also suggests taking regular breaks in between focused sessions of activity in order to allow for your brain to wander and rest.
It may seem weird at first, but after a period of time you will learn to focus better, and be more efficient in your work.
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Written on July 26th, 2016 by Paul Le