An Habit To Avoid

MULTITASKING

How we do more, Achieve less and Damage Our Brain                        

  Ishola Ayodele (ANIPR)

What is multitasking?

Multitasking is the act of performing more than one task at the same time. That doing a task while simultaneously doing another task.

Although, some people mostly ladies and women would claim they are capable of actually multitasking especially during cooking. This is wrong assumption as what most ladies or women do during cooking is performing a task within the break of another task.

For instance, 

While waiting for the water to boil she is washing the fish.

Multitasking would be for her to pound the yam while stirring the soup at the same time.

In essence, when someone does two things that require different attention at the same, we say “he/she is multitasking”

For instance,

Chatting while having a conversation, 

Reading while chatting or conversing, 

Driving while chatting, 

Having a conversation while browsing, 

Reading while watching TV, 

Listening to lecture while listening to music, 

Watching TV while listening to Radio or reading a magazine, 

Playing computer game or phone game while having a conversation, 

Receiving calls while driving, 

Conversing while driving except it is to help the driver with the driving.

Some people will argue that actually they can do two or more tasks at the same time. Research has proven beyond doubt that the brain can’t multitask. What you are doing is switching from one task to the other but because your brain is doing it at a very fast millisecond you get that impression that you are multitasking. Neuroscience had made us realized that, “While the right and left sides of the prefrontal cortex work together when focused on a single task, the sides work independently when people attempt to perform two tasks at once”.

A research at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) in Paris led by Neuroscientist Etienne Koechlin discovered this when they asked study participants to complete two tasks at the same time while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

When the scientists told the group they would receive a larger reward for accurately completing one of the two tasks, they found that nerve cell activity increased in only one side of the prefrontal cortex. However, when the greater reward was associated with the other task, the other side became more active. The findings suggest that when there are two concurrent goals, the brain divides in half, says INSERM neuroscientist Etienne Koechlin, who led the study.

Another research by Ophir, Nass, and Wagner discovered that people who reported multitasking more frequently (heavy multitaskers) were actually more prone to being distracted compared to those who reported multitasking less frequently (light multitaskers).

Heavy multitaskers tend to have a hard time filtering out irrelevant stimuli from their environment, and are distracted by the multiple things that they’re trying to allocate their attentions to.

In essence, heavy multitaskers may be “sacrificing performance on the primary task to let in other sources of information” (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009, p.15585).

What Experts said about Multitasking?

According to Koechlin, “the ease with which we juggle tasks depends on just how engaged the prefrontal cortex is. For instance, natural activities such as eating or walking place less demand on the prefrontal cortex compared with activities like reading or driving. This is why it’s easier to walk while eating”.

Another neuroscientist John Medina said, “When we juggle complex tasks, we are not multitasking. We are simply switching the focus of our attention back and forth between tasks that we are attempting to track. When we switch, our brains must take a moment to reload, remind, and recalculate. In his book “Brain Rules”, he calls this cognitive switching penalty.

A recent Harvard Business Review post said multitasking leads to as much as a 40% drop in productivity, increased stress, and a 10% drop in IQ (Bergman, 2010).

Many studies have found that driving while distracted (being on the phone or texting) is actually more dangerous than driving drunk.

10 Interesting Facts About Multi-Tasking

1. Put simply, multitasking leads to as much as a 40% drop in productivity, increased stress, and a 10% drop in IQ (Bergman, 2010).

2. Your brain is only capable of storing between 5 and 9 bits of info at any given time. If you’re trying to jumble around more, you’re going to get lost somewhere along the way. You’re much better off focusing that attention on 1 or 2 related bits of information.

3. When you are interrupted by a task such as checking your email or someone stopping by to chat, not only are you not multi-tasking but it can take you up to 15 whole minutes to get your mind refocused on a task. This can be not only annoying, but also costly if you’re depending on your ability to focus and get the job done.

4. Perhaps there is no better example as to why multi-tasking can detrimental than to look at driving while distracted. Studies that have been conducted in recent years have found that driving while distracted (on the phone, texting, deep in conversation, etc) is more dangerous than driving while intoxicated (but please don’t do that either!). 

5. The estimated cost of interruptions to the American economy is nearly $650 billion a year. (Jonathan B. Spira, chief analyst at Basex, a business-research firm). 

6. Multi-tasking isn’t impossible however. In fact, there are some people who can actually multi-task effectively. Unfortunately, they only are comprised of 2% of people so the odds are not in our favor.

7. On average, those individuals who use a computer for work (assuming near constant use) are distracted around once every 10.5 minutes. In an 8 hour work day, your average employee might lose up to 2.5 hours to distractions – that’s a lot!

8. Even watching television, which seems like an engrossing activity, 42% of individuals will browse the internet, 29% will talk on their phones, and 26% will text or instant message someone else about an entirely unrelated topic.

9. Although we feel accomplished when we have a tv on, a book open, and are seemingly getting things done, we are actually accomplishing less than if we focused all of our attention to just one of the tasks at hand.

10. For you music lovers out there, don’t worry – Stanford Professor Clifford Nass reassures that “In the case of music, it’s a little different. We have a special part of our brain for music, so we can listen to music while we do other things.”

    

Here 5 dangers of the many dangers of Multitasking

1. Attention spans are decreasing. We have multiple sources of input at any given time. According to one study, there is a tremendous increase in media used. But the increase in media usage—internet, television, video games, smart phones, text messaging, email—decreases the amount of attention paid to each device. 

2. Mental interruptions are increasing. Media’s power to interrupt is growing exponentially. In one study a group of Microsoft workers took an average of 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks (writing reports or computer code), after responding to incoming email or instant messages. Microsoft researchers were surprised by how easily people were distracted, and how long it took them to get back to the task. If it’s bad at Microsoft then you know it’s having an impact in other organizations.

3. Challenging work is more difficult to continue. The average worker is interrupted four times an hour. The more challenging the work, the less likely they are to go back to it after the interruption. In other words, our most important work is hit the hardest. The effect is the same as a person who goes to work high or drunk, yet thinks they are being productive.

       4. There is a cost when activities              are switched. There is a term called        “switch-cost.” The world of finance           uses this term to describe the                     recovery time associated with each         switch. The same principle applies           in “switch-tasking”. Every time you         switch rapidly between activities             you lose some precious time and               loss of attention. In other words,               there is a switch cost in switch-                 tasking. It might be time, or money,        focus or everything and this add up        to lost in productivity.

    

    Take-Away Message

                                      

Think of attention as the beam of a flashlight. Try as you will, you can never shine the light on two separate objects simultaneously. What you are doing is rapidly switching the beam back and forth between the objects.

1. People who multitask are less productive or efficient than those who simply concentrate on one project a time.

2. We don’t actually “multitask” because our brain simply switches rapidly between handling one task and then another.

3. If this switching from one task to another persists it might lead to an inability to focus on a task as we become easily distracted. 

4. Priorities your tasks and focus on a task at a time.

5. To help you focus you may have an emergency number or email where you can be reached in case of a crisis or urgent and important information. This done you can switch off your telephone. 

6. Simplify your life and your tasks. Do fewer things — better.

 

If this article has helped you in any way please leave a comment by clicking on the post a comment box below.

Ishola Nasirdeen Ayodele is a Public Relations Practitioner, An author and an effective leadership communication coach. 

He is on hand to provide you, your association or business the following beneficial services:

• Effective Communication Strategies for Outstanding leadership success, Unprecedented Political triumph and Exceptional Marketing breakthrough.
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