You’re on Bluetooth chatting on the phone while driving and sipping coffee in between green lights. You watch TV while you eat while you text back your coworker about that big project that’s due next week. You listen to a podcast while you clean your home. Multi-tasking – we’re all guilty of it.
Guilty? Wait, what do you mean guilty? We are all as productive as can be! Aren’t we? Well… no. We’ve been sold the idea over the years that doing more is better, so we’re constantly juggling ten things at once and most of us have the short-term memory of a hamster – which is, in fact, around three seconds.
Truth be told, multitasking is more harmful than beneficial, and science is there to prove it. Here are 5 reasons why multitasking is a weakness, not a skill.
1. Multitasking interferes with working memory.
It may not be too surprising that doing a million things at once will not help any single task stick out in your mind. It all becomes a big blur, which is why one study by Karen Murphy found a higher correlation between multitaskers and the inhibition of their working memory. Working memory is the ability to store, update, and manipulate a limited amount of information mentally. Basically, this is the system in your brain that temporarily holds and manipulates the information you need for your tasks. When you multitask, you’re dividing your already-limited capacity, and each task competes for energy and resources from your brain. As you switch between tasks, you’re refocusing your energy and retrieving information again, increasing your cognitive load and straining your memory resources.
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2. Multitaskers perform worse in school.
Perhaps some of the most prominent multitaskers are found in college, where classes, parties, work, and all sorts of hobbies combine. Another study looked specifically at media multitasking – something most of us do daily – and its impact on academic performance. The data showed that those who multitasked more frequently had a lower GPA than their peers. These students not only multitasked in class with texts or by looking up information online but also at home impacting their study habits. And, mind you, this was in technology-heavy classrooms where most students needed a computer to do their work.
3. Multitasking could create long-term memory problems.
A third intriguing study looked at how attention lapses correlate with memory. In this situation, attention lapses are in-the-moment decisions when we get distracted by one task while doing another. You know, like when you’re having a conversation with someone, and they glance down at the notifications on their phone screen for a quick second. The study found that lapses in attention in the moment before recalling a memory led to more forgetting. So that little moment that may not seem like much could impact your friend’s response to the question you just asked them, and it isn’t just about being distracted. These neural lapses could explain, in part, why some people remember better than others long-term.
4. Multitaskers are more inefficient at work.
Multitasking feels good because you trick yourself into thinking you’re killing two birds with one stone. While you may be able to cross off some items from the to-do list, half a century of cognitive science tells us that multitaskers end up doing less and missing information. It takes an average of 15 minutes to re-orient yourself to a primary task after getting distracted by something like a text, video, or email. Efficiency overall can drop by as much as 40%!
Our brain is a powerful organism, but it isn’t a computer. It has to choose which information to process at one time. If you’re listening to a video, for example, your visual cortex becomes less active and vice versa. That means if you’re working on your computer as you’re on the phone with a friend, you’re literally hearing less of what that friend is saying because your vision is focused on your screen!
5. You cannot be in the zone while multitasking.
I’m not going to lie – I lost many minutes while researching this very topic because of my phone notifications, and it was tough to get back into the grove after skimming each one. It seemed to take me forever, but once I got in the flow and hid my phone in my desk drawer, the research and notes seemed to fly out onto the paper in front of me. I was finally in the zone without distractions.
Most of us can list the times we’re in the zone. Maybe it was when you were really into a good book, video game, or productive project. If you recall that moment, I’d bet that 99% of us would say that we were solely focused on just that task at the time. You were in the zone, and you were in your state of flow. Giving something your 100% active attention means higher efficiency, productivity, and engagement, and that’s not possible when two or more tasks are in the mix at one time.
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Conclusion:
If you’ve been multitasking for years and are just now realizing how unproductive it is, don’t worry – we’ve all been there! Now that you have the data, though, you can try to focus your attention fully on one major task at a time to see how your efficiency improves. Let me know how it goes in the comments! And, as always, thanks so much for watching.