Multitasking Damages Your Brain And Career, New Studies Suggest

I always admired people that could multitask.  I thought they were so smart.  How could someone talk on the phone and compose an e-mail at the same time?  The answer is, most people can't, at least they can't do both as well as they could do one at a time.  A new study explains all this,

A recent study at Stanford University found that multitasking is less productive than doing a sing 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.

What if some people have a special talent for multitasking?  The Stanford researchers compared groups of people based on their tendency to multitask and their belief that it  helps their performance.  Heavy multitaskers were actually worse at multitasking than those who do one task at a time.  Frequent multitaskers performed worse because they had more trouble organizing their thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information.  They were also slower at switching from one task to another.

Multitasking reduces efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time.  When you try to do two things at one your brain lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully.  Research also shows that multitasking lowers your IQ.  A University of London study found that people who multitasked during cognitive tasks experienced IQ score declines that were similar to those that had smoked marijuana or stayed up all night, a drop of 15 points or so.  New research also suggests that impairment in cognitive  skills from multitasking is permanent, not temporary as was formerly thought.  A University of Sussex study found that high multitaskers had less brain density in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region responsible for empathy as well as cognitive and emotional control.

When I was much younger, my mother was always telling me to turn off the radio while I was studying.  I did, and the result is that to this day I need quiet to study or read a book.  I could never multitask.  I think about driving a car and texting, or even talking on the phone.  Doing both tasks at once definitely reduces the quality of your performance.  We're living in a world of technology, where multitasking is the norm.  Remember that for the really important stuff, one task at a time is best.