Why multitasking is not good

Research suggests that light media multitaskers are more likely to miss helpful information that isn't related to the task they're currently performing. For example, a person may read with a radio playing in the background. When important breaking news is broadcast, a heavy media multitasker is actually more likely to pick it up than a light media multitasker.

So should you avoid media multitasking? Based on current research, the answer is probably yes. Multitasking usually causes poorer performance when doing two things at once, and puts more demands on the brain than doing one thing at a time.

This is because the human mind suffers from an "attentional bottleneck" , which only allows certain mental operations to occur one after another. But if you're wondering whether media multitasking will impair your attention capabilities, the answer is probably no.

We don't know yet whether heavy media multitasking is really the cause for lower performance on the tests. Each task requires a specific mindset, and once you get in a groove you should stay there and finish. Those without constant email access did less multitasking and were less stressed because of it. But even interrupting one task to suddenly focus on another can be enough to disrupt short term memory, according to a study. When University of California San Francisco researchers asked participants to study one scene, but then abruptly switched to a different image, people ages 60 to 80 had a harder time than those in their 20s and 30s disengaging from the second picture and remembering details about the first.

As the brain ages, researchers say, it has a harder time getting back on track after even a brief detour. Experts recommend that even people who eat alone should refrain from turning on the television while eating, and to truly pay attention to their food. Eating lunch at your computer?

Dropping a few socks is not a big deal, and certainly worth the cost of having some time with your kids though being with your kids while not giving them your full attention might have its own costs. On the other hand, some of the consequences of trying to do two things at once, even if those things seem simple, can be horrific — having a car accident, for example. Even eating a sandwich or fiddling with the CD player while driving can increase your risk of an accident.

Some studies have shown that taking a walk while trying to sort out a thorny problem improves creativity and can help you come up with better solutions. That might just lead to a creative solution to the time crunch problem. Register or Log In. The Magazine Shop.

Research conducted at Stanford University found that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers also found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time. But what if some people have a special gift for multitasking?

The Stanford researchers compared groups of people based on their tendency to multitask and their belief that it helps their performance. They found that heavy multitaskers—those who multitask a lot and feel that it boosts their performance—were actually worse at multitasking than those who like to do a single thing at a time.

The frequent multitaskers performed worse because they had more trouble organizing their thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching from one task to another. Multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time.