Multi-Tasking Makes You Stupid

You know the feeling. You're trying to save time by doing two or three things at once -- sending e-mail while on the phone with your boss, listening to a colleague while sorting junk mail, making a list during a meeting.

Suddenly, your brain crashes. It can't recall what you just did, what was just said. Accusing eyes turn on you awaiting a response -- to what?

Ted Ruddock calls it "having a senior moment" -- and he's only 44. Making three points in a conversation recently, he got to No. 3 -- and blanked. "It's a little scary," says Mr. Ruddock, a Newtown, Conn., chief corporate learning officer, father of three, husband, caregiver to his aged parents and -- not surprisingly -- inveterate multitasker.

A growing body of scientific research shows one of jugglers' favorite time-saving techniques, multitasking, can actually make you less efficient and, well, stupider. Trying to do two or three things at once or in quick succession can take longer overall than doing them one at a time, and may leave you with reduced brainpower to perform each task.

"There's scientific evidence that multitasking is extremely hard for somebody to do, and sometimes impossible," says David Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan. Chronic high-stress multitasking also is linked to short-term memory loss.

Yet we're clearly engaged in a long-term trend toward doing more of it. Some 45% of American workers feel they are asked or expected to work on too many tasks at once, says a study of 1,003 employees by the Families and Work Institute, New York.

Though the research has been applied mostly to the debate over driving with cellphones, or aiding people in mind-boggling jobs like air-traffic control, it has quality-of-life implications too. Some findings:

People who multitask are actually less efficient than those who focus on one project at a time, according to a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. The time lost switching among tasks increases with the complexity of the tasks, according to the research by Dr. Meyer and others.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1046286576946413103.html

Older folks, yes. We can only physically attend to one task at a time.


This younger generation is so much more accustomed to media multitasking, their brains are changing/adapting. They're a whole lot better at multitasking.

Posted by BalmyTigress
I agree, and on that note, I would like to trade my Mars in Gemini for something more focused.

No don't do it! You really agree with that? You have a true talent for multitasking, and if this article is implying that it yields stupidity than you must have been born with a computer-like brain of superior intellect and multitasking MASTERY.

This is an intriguing angle. I do have my counterarguments, though.

First of all, by saying that we Americans cannot distribute energy on several subjects simultaneously is a statement that is not open to expanding logic anyway.

Second of all, the evidence does make scientific sense, but that's just it. It's SCIENCE. There are much more things a human being inadvertently takes into consideration when doing three things at once- his/her tolerance for stress, capacity for mental stimulation and excitement, and plain ol' opinions. Meaning one person who things multitasking in an office is stressful might be a peace of cake for a workaholic.

The author fails to mention during his/her demonstration of scientific evidence that scientific theory ALSO states that women excel at multitasking and must do so for the sake of survival for her and her baby, according to evolution.

I am by no means discrediting the author, and I do not think I am right and this article is wrong. I simply believe some have a talent for walking and chewing gum, while others may need to focus mental energy because they do not possess the ability to scatter it and keep track of all of the channels into which the mental energy manifests.

I can't remember if this is accurate, read a while back there's a maximum number of things the brain can focus on and the brain actually can't help to focus on those. I think the number was 5 to 6 or something. I should really pull up the article. If that's true then maybe the multi-taskers just had an invading thought and it pushed whatever they're currently zoned in on out of the brain *shrugs*

It's like when people say they work better when they have music in the background I suppose it takes up those slots, puts it on auto-pilot so the brain could actually focus given the limited slots they may need to focus on.

well, walking and chewing gum is a little different because those tasks are automatic. they're habitual, so they generally do not require much of our attention.


but we physically cannot attend to the radio and television simultaneously. that's like, humanly impossible.

i think the term "multitasking" more so refers to the shift between or among activities. attending to one stimulus and then pushing the rest into the background. younger people who are plugged into their computers and TVs more often are better at making those shifts. their brains can do it more quickly. or so say some researchers.

Posted by everevolvingepithet
You can listen to Magic/Capital fm and watch a silent movie?

nope, not to my knowledge. it'd be more like, when you're attuned to the movie, the radio becomes background noise. and when you attend to the radio, the film becomes background "noise". i believe....

Maybe for the really talented! Saw this clip of a girl writing simultaneously with both hands right hand righting in chinese and left hand english. But that's honestly gotta take some talent I think my brain would go kaput before I could go that lol

*writing

see I can't even form proper sentences and I'm not really multitasking smh.

Posted by everevolvingepithet
Possibly, I might have to try it out. I wonder if there's any studies that show this can be done?

i don't know, i doubt it though. dichotic listening experiments done by Cherry (1953) and Moray (1959) showed that it can't be done. those were classic studies, but i don't know of any others. in those experiments, subjects were only able to report what they'd heard in one ear or the other, never both.

Posted by aquasnoz
Maybe for the really talented! Saw this clip of a girl writing simultaneously with both hands right hand righting in chinese and left hand english. But that's honestly gotta take some talent I think my brain would go kaput before I could go that lol

that's so decent.

i'm so jealous of bilingual people, lol. even more, trilingual ppl. if you speak more than 3 languages, you're a show-off.

Posted by BalmyTigress

Posted by happytohear

Posted by BalmyTigress
I agree, and on that note, I would like to trade my Mars in Gemini for something more focused.

No don't do it! You really agree with that? You have a true talent for multitasking, and if this article is implying that it yields stupidity than you must have been born with a computer-like brain of superior intellect and multitasking MASTERY.

I've got Sun in Aqua, Grand Trine in Air and Mars in Gemini (the third air is in Pluto). So I've got all this enthusiasm and natural talent for figuring stuff out and I can process a ton of scattered information and make sense of it. However, when I would really have to focus on one thing and put all my effort into it, more often than not, I just can't. If I could master this...if I could just find a proper way to get things done in a way that would be natural for me, but still efficient, then I'd be a very happy bunny.

click to expand

Ah, yes. Like trying to get a hyperactive child to be quiet in a movie theatre 🙂
When you feel like it's impossible to focus only on one thing, perhaps you can see this as a challenge, and challenges are intellectually stimulating for Mars and Gemini, right? So when you feel your attention span quickly defusing, maybe try to redirect it on the same task but with a different approach? Let's just say you were required to read something very uninteresting for your career or continuing education, and you have a strong urge to listen to music while reading. You could create a melody in your head while you read, or read aloud in different ways: a song, an Icelandic accent, etc. Something to keep your mind engaged. And maybe put humor into whatever you have to focus on? Like how stand up comedians can engage the audience for hours because they're funny.

Posted by everevolvingepithet

Posted by ScorpSuperior

Posted by everevolvingepithet
Possibly, I might have to try it out. I wonder if there's any studies that show this can be done?

i don't know, i doubt it though. dichotic listening experiments done by Cherry (1953) and Moray (1959) showed that it can't be done. those were classic studies, but i don't know of any others. in those experiments, subjects were only able to report what they'd heard in one ear or the other, never both.

Ah, okay. Were these studies done on people with the average/normal brain?

click to expand

lol, yea, as far as i know. i mean, they knew there was another voice speaking...whether it was male or female, i suppose. just unable report the content of the message.

i guess our brains are just managing so much at once (walking, talking, lights, sounds, all sorts of internal/external stimuli) that's it's like "whoa, whoa, whoa...let's prioritize" and starts filtering through all the incoming messages, focusing on what's most relevant and tossing the rest. at least, that's how i picture it.

Thanks SS! I love interesting reads and I googled it when you mentioned it! I love the part where they conducted the test for a correlation to schizophrenia but I suppose it would make sense if your brain blocks out the ability to hear selectively it might just make you go cray cray 😛

I had a good laugh when they mentioned that 'sex words' would trigger the brain into hearing that source haha!

Posted by aquasnoz
Thanks SS! I love interesting reads and I googled it when you mentioned it! I love the part where they conducted the test for a correlation to schizophrenia but I suppose it would make sense if your brain blocks out the ability to hear selectively it might just make you go cray cray 😛

I had a good laugh when they mentioned that 'sex words' would trigger the brain into hearing that source haha!

Lol, I'm glad you found it interesting, aquasnoz- and you're welcome. Speaking of those living with schizophrenia, I'm told findings suggest their brains have difficulty with the following...

okay, so you know how we have internal dialogues? like, for example, if i'm walking down the hall and i see an annoying coworker and inside i'm like, "oh gosh, here comes johnny. i hope he doesn't stop and talk to me." but i recognize that it's my own internal speech. well, the area in our brains that becomes active when *someone else* is talking to us, that same part lights up when a schizophrenic individual is having an internal dialogue. so they end up confusing internal dialogue for external dialogue. which is why so often we'll hear a person with this illness accusing others of name-calling or bad-mouthing them. they definitely did hear the words, just not coming from the person they think said them.