People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time, a group of Stanford researchers has found.
I suppose that would be you, dear reader, at the receiving end of my emails, blog entries, tweets, and text messages. Please don’t try to read them all at the same time, and at least please don’t try to listen to my puckcasts while reading this.
All kidding aside – but still, don’t do it – I found that study fascinating. Today, I finally listened to (while driving a car) the On Point podcast with the professor behind the study trying to convince a couple of twenty-somethings that those who try to multitask actually are worse at focusing than those that don’t multitask. The high multitaskers also had worse memory and were slower to switch from one task to another than those who didn’t multitask as much.
“They couldn’t help thinking about the task they weren’t doing,” Ophir said. “The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can’t keep things separate in their minds.”
The brain is not made for multitasking, the captain said. And well, I think I’ve known that all along, even though I can chew gum and walk, even run, at the same time. But I cannot listen to CNN and read the ticker at the same time.
Can you?
