Is multitasking good for our brains

Many of you have heard and read that being efficient requires no multitasking in the process, but there are times when even at home you might find yourself having dinner in front of the TV with your laptop on next to you. Working with mail, we are trying to do something else on Facebook and Twitter, while not forgetting about Google+.

In theory, focusing on one task is easier than having several processes in your head at once. So why is it so difficult for us to focus? Leo Widrich, co-founder of the Buffer project, tries to answer this question.

Multitasking makes us feel better

In fact, when trying to find an answer to this question, a simple truth comes to light: people who multitask are not actually more productive, they just experience more emotional satisfaction from their work.

This is the conclusion reached by a researcher named Zen Wong while studying the issue of multitasking. While reading a book, watching TV and communicating with friends along the way, we have a feeling of completeness of all planned and necessary things. We do several things at the same time and feel incredibly efficient at the same time.

Unfortunately, in this case, our feelings are at odds with reality. During the study, the students who actively multitask felt better, but their performance was much worse.

Another problem with multitasking is the perceived effectiveness of a person with this approach. We see such people, and it seems to us that they literally “manage everything at once,” and we want to be like them.

How our brain perceives multitasking

Interestingly, our brains are not at all capable of multitasking. Eating food at the same time, chatting with 5 people in the messenger and sending emails does not really mean that the brain can focus on all these activities at once.

Instead, each of the processes performed "lives" in a separate part of the brain, and they are not performed simultaneously. In fact, the brain simply starts one process, while stopping another, and the multitasking we seem to be in fact is a frequent and fast switching.

This includes the work of Clifford Nass, who suggested that multitasking helps to develop other useful qualities, such as sorting information, the ability to quickly switch between tasks and keep large amounts of information in mind.

However, practice showed the opposite: multitaskers did much worse at filtering irrelevant information and switching between tasks.

Solution

Initially, Leo used 2 mailboxes at the same time, TweetDeck, Facebook and an additional utility for sending instant messages. Constantly navigating between application windows to make sure you haven't forgotten anything actually makes the workflow a headache. To get out of this situation, it is enough to make 3 changes to your activities:

One browser tab … Try limiting yourself to having only one open browser tab. This limitation will force you to really get serious about sorting tasks by priority.
The next point follows from the previous one and can be called with one simple word “ planning". At the end of your day, just try to plan your activities for the next day. Of course, not everyone has a smooth workflow. Often there are urgent tasks that you could not have guessed yesterday or even 10 minutes ago. Nevertheless, here, too, an analysis can be carried out by allocating the average required amount of time for such force majeure. In addition to superficial planning, try to mentally work out ways to solve each planned task. Such brainstorming is always good for the brain and allows you to develop in advance ways to solve the problems ahead.
Move around … It would seem, what does the change of jobs have to do with it? Very simple, try to plan your day so that there is a connection between the tasks performed and your location. “I’ll go there and do it, and then I’ll go there and do it there.” Again, this approach is not applicable for everyone, but a change of scenery actually helps not only focus on individual tasks, but also gives you the opportunity to relax and get a little distracted.