Multitasking, REALLY?

Multitasking, REALLY?

Today, the vast majority of us multitask while using our smartphones.  Checking our emails, surfing social media, texting, launching a long list of mobile apps, and then, you add in Netflix streaming at the background of the wall-mounted SmartTV, then you're grabbing some foodies while working OR while engaged in a conversation.  MULTITASKING has  become such a regular part of our lives that most of us that most of us believe we do it well.  Multi-tasking, REALLY❓❓❓

BUT here's a not so good news from neuro-scientists.  In their most recent studies, it found that people WHO were frequent media MULTITASKERS had reductions in their brains' grey matter, those areas related to cognitive control and the regulation of motivation and emotion.  They linked up their most recent study with a 2016 research WHICH found that chronic media MULTITASKERS manifested weakness in both their working memory [that ability to store relevant information while working on a task] and long-term memory [the ability to store and recall information over longer periods of time]💦💦💦

When the Covid-19 Pandemic broke out, there were studies covering people's MULTITASKING at home over a seven-day period and the common conclusion is that the more people MULTITASKED, the more likely they were to exhibit behavioral distractibility.  And the prevailing assumption is that by responding to so many distractions, one loses the ability to distinguish between important and unimportant interruptions💧💧💧

These days, WHAT's the common dilemma whether you are in Ankara [Turkey], Moscow [Russie], New Delhi or Mumbai [both in India], Jakarta [Indonesia] OR Manila [Philippines], MULTITASKING can make you walk into traffic.  Researchers compiled information of 1,400 pedestrians in New York City WHO were hit by a car, and discovered that 20 percent of teenagers reported being distracted by a mobile device WHEN they were stuck [as compared to 10% adults] in traffic💥💥💥

Our takeaway:  MULTITASKING hurts and impacts a lot.  Call it COLLATERAL DAMAGE.  A study in the classroom concluded that students WHO MULTITASKED scored lower in their exams.  From a health perspective, experts concluded that MULTITASKING can lead to falling and breaking bones.  A recent study of the elderly found that MULTITASKING was likely to affect women's gait, leading to a significantly greater number of falls and broken bones.  So, let's revisit the viability of MULTITASKING😕😕😕

Multitasking, Anyone?

Multitasking, Anyone?

Anyone pushing you hard for Multitasking?  I won't blame them. Likely, they see all of its upsides and very little, if at all, of its downsides and I'll confess that many years back, I was so gung-ho Multitasking until, one day, when I was attending my battery of IBM trainings, I learned that although IBM was aggressively marketing MPP's [massive parallel processors], deep into its architecture, the processor was breaking up processes into MULTI-THREADS📗📙📘

Even this comparative chart shows us an apples-to-apples comparison of our brain when Single-tasking versus Multitasking and what does this tell us?  THAT doing only a thing at a time is a surprisingly powerful way to become more productive.  ON the surface, this makes zero sense on the premise that doing more is the faster path to productivity❓❓❓

BUT today, I will stand my ground and vehemently argue that that ISN'T the case here.  Doing more than one thing at a time is a great way to become busier and it's usually a more engaging way of working.  When we try doing multiple things at the same time, our brain is more stimulated and it releases DOPAMINE💎💎💎

BUT study after study has shown that while MULTITASKING can be stimulating, and may even make us feel more productive, it invariably makes us less productive.  WHY?  Because the attention we can give to WHAT'S in front of us gets limited.  Every moment, our brain is flooded with information [and that includes sights, sounds, words, thoughts] BUT it can only focus on so much✅✅✅

The very rich history of chess as a game is peppered with stories of chess greats, amongst which is American Bobby Fisher and today, Norwegian Magnus Carlsen is lording it over the field.  BUT how come even the best super-grandmasters spend anywhere from two to six hours just for one game when all along they are SINGLE-TASKING?  It's because that myth about MULTITASKING has been shattered and destroyed even as we speak now❗❗❗