Really, MULTITASKING Just DOESN'T Work!

Really, MULTITASKING Just DOESN'T Work!  True, some days we feel like a master multitasker even as we drink our cup of coffee in the morning and catching up with emails and browsing with no end jumping from one social media platform to another.  BUT again, time and again, experts have been telling us that MULTITASKING just DOESN'T work, period.  WHY?  Because we're all wired to be mono-taskers dude!@#$%?

Several times in my daily morning operations call, often I share my screen and sometimes, I'll request my team member to share his/her screen and voila, I CAN'T stop asking, WHY he/she got tons and tons of Excel tabs concurrently open [and it's not even 900am, whew!].  YES, this is the truth.  Even WHEN we think we're MULTITASKING, most often we AREN'T really doing two things at once.  BUT instead, we're doing individual actions in rapid succession OR task-switching.  In fact, studies show that generally, just around 2.5%  of people are able to MULTITASK effectively💥💥💥

YES, here's a post-mortem conclusion:  MULTITASKING can hinder our performance.  Studies have shown that WHEN our brain is constantly switching gears to bounce back and forth between tasks [especially WHEN those tasks are complex and require our active attention], we then become less efficient and MORE likely to make a mistake.  This might NOT be as apparent OR impactful WHEN we're doing tasks that are simple and routine, like listening to music while walking, or folding laundry while watching TV💚💛💜

BUT WHEN the stakes are higher and the tasks are more complex, trying to MULTITASK can negatively impact our lives.  YES dude, that MULTITASKING does divide our attention.  It makes it harder for us to give our full attention to one thing.  For example, in one study, attempting to complete additional tasks during a driving simulation led to poorer driving performance.  Other studies even led to scarier results which suggest that people WHO frequently "MEDIA-MULTITASK" [like listening to music while scrolling through social media are more distracted and less able to focus their attention😗😗😗

Our takeaway:  Besides talking about all these, a pitfall NOT so obvious is that trying to do too much at once makes it harder for us to be mindful and TRULY PRESENT in the moment.  Have you either experienced OR witnessed someone talking to another one who keeps scrolling through social media and gives perfunctory remarks like 'A-OK' OR 'REALLY'' OR 'YES'?  Likely they DON'T sincerely mean it because their attention gets divided by that MULITASKING.  Let's just stop that dude❗❗❗

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😕😕😕