Multitasking – fact or fiction

 

These days, multitasking, or at least what we perceive as multitasking, is supposed to be the norm. Handling a conversation, an email and a file all at the same time – no problem! Or is there? New research in science – and old common sense – is telling us that the brain is simply not designed to do more than one thing at a time. And trying to do so may actually impair our ability to produce quality results.

Neuropsychologist Pierre Jolicoeur of the Université de Montréal says that “nobody can perform two tasks at the same time.” Jolicoeur explains, “People do what’s called ‘fast switching’ between tasks. They may think they’re doing several things at once, but that’s just an illusion.” In daily situations – e.g., holding a conversation while reading an article – one task will suffer; the duration for task completion will increase or the quality will decrease or both.

Jolicoeur recommends, naturally, to focus on one task at a time. This, of course, does not preclude the reality of life – that we will sometimes have several items to work on, each with its own level of importance and time sensitivity. Neither does it absolve us of responsibility for that which we need to do. These new findings simply serve notice. Let us be aware of our own abilities and our limits and recall , like gardeners, that those things which we attend to with love will bloom.

 

 

April 30, 2008

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