When Multitasking is Counterproductive

Throughout the ages, the multi-armed Hindu Goddess Durga has exemplified the talent of multi-tasking. While technology has effectively given us extra arms and eyes, it has not given us more than one brain. Perhaps this is why a British study conducted at King's College London University found that multi-tasking, such as allowing frequent interruptions as you work at your desk, can reduce IQ by 10 points. This is equivalent to the negative effects of sleep deprivation after pulling an all-nighter. Ten points is an enormous swing: 20 points lower and you'd be considered mentally handicapped. Do we need some rules about when not to multitask?

As technology increasingly tempts people to attempt several things at once, many managers have embraced the idea that the few can be made to do the work of many. While calling it "multitasking" invites people to think that they can be doing more than one thing at a time, the act of multitasking is switching back and forth quickly between two or more tasks. Humans cannot think about two things at once. For example, let’s say you’re typing an email and a co-worker walks in and starts talking to you. Can you type and listen at the same time? Don't kid yourself. One or the other (or both) lose out as you try to split your focus.

Does multi-tasking allows you increase your efficiency by working more quickly?

Good Multitasking vs. Bad

There are situations where it does. But to sort good the multitasking from the bad, we need a definition:

The cost of task switching

Scientists who study multitasking have analysed the hidden costs of what they call “task switching.” When we hop frequently from task to task, even though we feel busy, productivity suffers more than we realize.

Doctors Joshua Rubinstein, David Meyer and Jeffrey Evans, described the effec in a 2001 article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: for all types of tasks, subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another. The time loss (called “time cost”) was even greater when the complexity and unfamiliarity of the task increased. The scientists estimated that not being able to concentrate for even ten minutes at a time may cost a company as much as 20 to 40 percent in terms of potential efficiency lost, or the “time cost of switching,” as these researchers call it. For most complex tasks, even a minor interruption can break our focus and reduce produictivity as workers "ramp up" their concentration again over the next fifteen minutes.

Multitasking starves deep thinking

Another hidden cost of multitasking is that without focus, we may tend to make worse decisions and come up with less inventive ideas. Professor Mark Wolff of Hartwick College reported on the invasive nature of multitasking in the university environment, stating: "the multitasking afforded by technology is antithetical to the kind of education we promote." While multitasking you do not think so much as react to stimuli. To think critically, you have to focus on ideas and dwell on them. If students can be anywhere in cyberspace, why should they be present on campus, either intellectually or even physically?"

To explain why this happens, you have to understand the way the brain works. When you toggle back and forth between activities, you’re using your “executive control” process, which is basically your mental CEO. You’ve got to (1) want to switch tasks (called goal shifting: “I want to do this now instead of that”), you’ve got to (2) make the switch (called rule activation: “I’m turning off the rules for that and turning on the rules for this”), and then you’ve got to (3) get warmed up on what you switch to or switched back to.

Rule activation itself takes significant amounts of time, several tenths of a second, which can add up when people switch back and forth repeatedly between tasks. Thus, multitasking may seem more efficient on the surface but may actually take more time in the end. As Meyer points out, a mere half second of time lost to task switching can mean the difference between life and death for a driver using a cell phone, because during the time that the car is not totally under control, it can travel far enough to crash into obstacles the driver might have otherwise avoided.

"When we're multi-tasking, we don't focus our attention, so information never gets into our memory stores," says Dr. Gary Small, a memory specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We just never learned the information to begin with." NBC News correspondent Dr. Bruce Hensel seconds that emotion, noting that “research shows multi-tasking uses too many parts of the brain at once… Memory and focus areas may not light up on brain maps as much. The stress also may shrink memory receptors.”

http://www.kickassincollegeblog.com/2006/03/the_perils_of_multitasking_new.php