Why we like multitasking
Work And Study Productivity / / December 23, 2019
Almost certainly you know the situation when you are at work, in addition to a plurality of operating programs and documents, open a post office, two or three social networking and corporate chat. And, of course, you manage at the same time to communicate with colleagues, drinking tea. multitasking so deeply penetrated into our lives that no longer seems to be something amazing. We all have long been little Caesars, and not only at work: I'm sure many of you at the same time watching television and chatting with the phone.
The prevailing opinion is that it is always better to finish one task before proceeding to the next, but in fact do so few. Working on two or three tasks at the same time, we feel engaged and console ourselves with hope that so much save time. However, the worm of doubt about the fact that we could do the work more efficiently, does not disappear.
In a study conducted in a few decades Blyudornom Allen (Allen Bluedorn), found that monohronizma efficiency (tasks one by one in series), or multi-task - a matter of personal preferences. Some people actually feel better when performing tasks strictly on one, others are happy at work, which requires multitasking. However, this does not mean that they do all the work faster.
Studies have forced multitasking seemingly confirm the conventional wisdom about the advantages of sequential tasks completed. At a time when the subjects need to switch between different tasks or to perform two tasks at the same time, many have problems with residual attention.
Experiments have shown that when switching from one task to another, some of the resources of your brain continues to work on a previous task.
Every time switching between tasks, you have to remind yourself, what did you do before that, and at the same time to disconnect from the previous task. The use of attention, working memory and executive functions to solve more than one problem at the same time creates a higher cognitive load, and solving complex problems you can exceed your limit. This inevitably affected performance.
Many researchers have come to the conclusion that we are slow and less accurate when forced to switch between two or more tasks. However, in studies Leroy Sophie (Sophie Leroy), dedicated to the residual attention, we found that our brain able to quickly get rid of "aftertaste" of the previous problem, if forced to work in conditions of limited time. When the test set strict deadlines, they have been less cognitively sophisticated solutions. This, in turn, allows you to quickly get rid of the previous focus on the problem and proceed to the next head-on. coming deadline It makes us more concentrated.
Multitasking is given more difficult, if similar tasks. For example, it is difficult to talk on the phone and respond to emails, because both actions use similar thought processes. If the objectives are very different, multi-tasking may even improve performance.
A study conducted in 2015 at the University of Florida, was the fact that the subjects were asked to sit on the bikes and pedal with a comfortable speed for two minutes. After they have done the same thing, but in front of the screen, which was attended by cognitive tests of varying complexity. As a result, subjects pedaled 25% faster in the production of cognitive tasks, with no prejudice to its decision.
The study authors suggested that in the case of manual activities such as training on exercise bikes a distraction can even be useful.
Slightly more than 2% of people brilliantly cope with multitasking without sacrificing performance. This small group was discovered by chance by psychologists from the University of Utah. David Strayer (David Strayer) and Jason Watson (Jason Watson) figured out why talking on a cell phone while driving is much more dangerous than chat with a passenger who travels with you in the car (because a passenger, of course, stops talking in a dangerous road situation).
They found something that at first seemed to him an error in the data: the person who leads equally well regardless of distractions. During the test data it was found that such a person was not alone.
On average, two people out of a hundred are supermnogozadachnymi - the ability to focus on multiple tasks without compromising performance.
It is interesting that the same psychologists have found that the greater the people's confidence in their own multi-tasking, the worse, they were tested, where they were required to memorize a list of words at the same time solving mathematical tasks.
But, even if you are not multitasking habit to surf the Web at the same time with the passage of computer games, listening to music and checking the mail can give you a little bonus. Liu Kelvin (Kelvin Lui) and Alan Wong (Alan Wong) from the University of Hong Kong found that people who regularly using two or three source, the better is combined information obtained through the organs of vision and hearing.
Amazing facts related to multitasking is that, despite the increased cognitive load, many of us can not refuse to work in this format. Why do we like it? Not being objectively the most effective way to work, it seems to be less difficult, as we are constantly slowly distractedHe is trying to "eat an elephant."
Apart from the obvious disadvantages, multitasking has several advantages. There are circumstances in which this form of work is preferred that when we are in no hurry and execute creative jobs, encourage us to think more broadly, or when we need a little distracted, doing monotonous mechanical work. The main thing - to learn to use it in appropriate situations!