Task-switching

My wife told me women could multitask better than men.

I told her, “No, they can’t, and I can prove it.” s

She said, “OK, prove it.”

I said, “Shut up and cook my breakfast.”

She couldn’t do even one.

-Anonymous

There are five reasons why multitasking is bad for our mental health, according to studies, and these are: It slows down productivity, it is not polite, it is terrible for the brain, it is prone to mistakes, and it can interrupt the flow of work.

First, multitasking slows down productivity. Joggling from one task to another is counterproductive. In fact, according to recent studies, the brain is only capable of handling one job at a time. Furthermore, neuropsychologist Cynthia Kubu, Ph.D. said that: “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,” We can say that multitasking is a myth.

Second, multitasking is impolite. Just doing our emails in the middle of a meeting or answering phone calls while conversing about essential matters can be a sign of rudeness. One good example is a story of a patient in a surgery room. However, she felt a bit nervous while the surgeon was taking calls while preparing for her facial surgery. After she has slept, after a couple of hours, she wakes up and is surprised to see that her nose is more prominent. When she asked the doctor about the procedure, the doctor said he did a fantastic nose lift to brighten her face. After hearing this, she felt she wanted to collapse since she only wanted a facelift.

Third, multitasking is bad for the brain. Stanford University researcher Clifford Nass found that even when chronic multitaskers focused on a single task, they were less efficient; Nass concluded that frequent multitasking changes the way the brain functions over time, leading to decreased productivity even when focused. Therefore, brain function can reduce while doing an alternate task. It can also affect our ability to learn because to learn, we need to be able to focus.

Fourth, multitasking can lead to more mistakes. Just imagine doing things repeatedly since you can’t get them right since you have some issues with focusing on one task. I want to distinguish between being a multipotentialite and being a multitasker. A multipotentialite is a person that jumps from one subject matter to another till he gets to mastery. In comparison, a multitasker is a person who joggles from one task to the next. Now, doing things without focus will lead to insanity. Einstein once said: “Doing things repeatedly and wanting to get a different result is insanity.” Suppose we wanted a better result to give much attention to a single task before jumping to another job.

Lastly, multitasking can interrupt the flow of work. Dr. Kubu says. “If we’re constantly attempting to multitask, we don’t practice tuning out the rest of the word to engage in deeper processing and learning.” Recent studies led by Jeremy Marty-Dugas at the University of Waterloo suggest that constantly checking your smartphone while doing other work makes people more absentminded in their daily lives; absentminded distraction is likelier to hinder job performance than to help.

“There’s a temptation to multitask everything, but you can’t multitask presence.”

-Cindy Crawford