If you think, multi-tasking is a boon, you have to think twice for research says that productivity actually drops by as much as 40 percent when people try to do two or more things at once according to researchers from the University of Michigan.
According to an article published in Entrepreneur Magazine, as workers' attention spans are whipsawed by interruptions, something insidious happens in the brain: Interruptions erode an area called effortful control and with it the ability to regulate attention. In other words, the more you checnk the messages in your email or cellphones, the more you feel to check them.
"Technology is an addiction," says Gayle Porter, a professor of Management at Rutgers University who has studied e-compulsion. "If someone can't turn their cellphones off particularly the high end BlackBerry, there's a problem.
The cult of multitasing would have use believe that compulsive message-checking is the behavior of an always-on, hyper-productive worker. But it's not. It's the sign of a distracted employee who misguidedly believe he can do multiple tasks at one time.
Science disagrees. People may be able to chew gum and walk at the same time, but they can't do two or more thinking tasks simultaneously.Say, a teacher who is writing test items while reading and checking messages from her phone. Those are both language tasks (reading and writing) that have to go through the same cognitive channel.
Trying to do both forces, her brain to switch back and forth which results in "switching cost," forcing her to slow down. The switching exacts other costs too-- mistakes and burnout. One of the study's authors, David Meyer, asserts bluntly that quality work and multitasking are incompatible.
Brian Bailey and Joseph Konstan of the University of Minnesota discovered that sleeve-tagging peripheral tasks triggered twice the number of errors and jacked up levels of annoyance to anywhere between 31 percent and 106 percent. Their interrupted test workers also took 3 percent to 27 percent more time to complete the reading, counting or math problems.
In fact, the harder the interrupted task, the harder it was to get back on track. A Microsoft study suggests it takes 15 minutes for a worker to refocus after an interruption
The damaging effects spread well beyond the office cubicle. Kate LeVan, a communication consultant in Evanston, Illinois, coaches executives whose brains are so scrambled by electronic interruptions that they stumble during key face-to-face interactions: board meetings, investors pitches, sales presentations.
"They can't have an extended conversation for more than a few minutes.," LeVan says. "That's the impact of having all these data going back and forth. They have problems in conversation because they can't focus."
If this problem exists among professionals, what more on ordinary young students who used to multi-tasked?
Source: Entrrepreneur Magazine, June 2010 Issue, Philippines
 |
| If you think multitasking is good, think twice. (firehow.com photo) |
"Technology is an addiction," says Gayle Porter, a professor of Management at Rutgers University who has studied e-compulsion. "If someone can't turn their cellphones off particularly the high end BlackBerry, there's a problem.
The cult of multitasing would have use believe that compulsive message-checking is the behavior of an always-on, hyper-productive worker. But it's not. It's the sign of a distracted employee who misguidedly believe he can do multiple tasks at one time.
Science disagrees. People may be able to chew gum and walk at the same time, but they can't do two or more thinking tasks simultaneously.Say, a teacher who is writing test items while reading and checking messages from her phone. Those are both language tasks (reading and writing) that have to go through the same cognitive channel.
Trying to do both forces, her brain to switch back and forth which results in "switching cost," forcing her to slow down. The switching exacts other costs too-- mistakes and burnout. One of the study's authors, David Meyer, asserts bluntly that quality work and multitasking are incompatible.
Brian Bailey and Joseph Konstan of the University of Minnesota discovered that sleeve-tagging peripheral tasks triggered twice the number of errors and jacked up levels of annoyance to anywhere between 31 percent and 106 percent. Their interrupted test workers also took 3 percent to 27 percent more time to complete the reading, counting or math problems.
In fact, the harder the interrupted task, the harder it was to get back on track. A Microsoft study suggests it takes 15 minutes for a worker to refocus after an interruption
The damaging effects spread well beyond the office cubicle. Kate LeVan, a communication consultant in Evanston, Illinois, coaches executives whose brains are so scrambled by electronic interruptions that they stumble during key face-to-face interactions: board meetings, investors pitches, sales presentations.
"They can't have an extended conversation for more than a few minutes.," LeVan says. "That's the impact of having all these data going back and forth. They have problems in conversation because they can't focus."
If this problem exists among professionals, what more on ordinary young students who used to multi-tasked?
Source: Entrrepreneur Magazine, June 2010 Issue, Philippines
No comments:
Post a Comment