I wonder how many of us pride ourselves on being able to multi-task and believe that, in doing, so we are super-efficient, capable, incredibly productive people who are vastly superior to the plodding uni-taskers?
I recently came across a book (The Organised Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload) by cognitive neuro-scientist, Dr Daniel Levitin, and learned that multi -tasking is a myth, a "diabolical illusion".
In today's society, we overtax our brains with the information explosion around us. If we check our e-mails every five minutes we may check them over 150 times a day. We tweet, look at Facebook, browse the internet, shop online and may do any or all of these whilst "working". We text whilst walking, check texts or e-mails whilst waiting for a bus or in a restaurant when our companion nips to the loo.
Technology was meant to make life easier and spare us the drudgery of many mundane tasks - but why do we now have less time, not more?
Those who believe they multi-task are deluding themselves - they do not multi-task but, rather, they switch very rapidly between many tasks. There is a cognitive cost in doing this. Our brains benefit from briefly switching off - daydreaming whilst we gaze out of the window. (We have all been on train journeys where those in the carriage are glued to their phones or laptops and do not look out of the window at all!) The to and fro between focussing and day-dreaming helps to recalibrate and restore the brain; multi-tasking does not.
Multi-tasking increases the production of the stress hormone, cortisol, and also adrenaline which can over-stimulate the brain and cause scrambled thinking and mental fog.
Recent research suggested that trying to complete a piece of work and seeing an unread e-mail in your inbox can reduce you IQ by 10 points.
Dr Levitin explains that trying to learn while multi-tasking, eg a child doing homework with the television on, causes the new information to go to the wrong part of the brain - the striatum and not the hippocampus. The striatum deals with new skills and procedures, not facts and ideas. The hippocampus is where it should go to be organised and made available to us to retrieve when needed.
His research also showed that rejection of the screen and recourse to pen and paper may be useful - many subjects found thoughts and ideas flowed better:
"The part of the brain in the motor cortex and affiliated areas that are required when you write something by hand requires deeper processing than pulling a menu and clicking on a drop down. The very act of writing something down causes you to remember it even if you throw the paper away".
Several published studies suggest that if you read a book in paper form you are likely to take in more than if you read it on e-reader. Electronic books lack the spatial clues our hippocampus needs to consign information to memory. Thoughts are associated with different places in the book - the example of reading something meaningful in a book and wanting to go back to find it, you will remember whether it is at the top or bottom of a page or a left or right facing page. Your Kindle provides no such help!
Our culture idolises the multi-tasker, those super business people who are keeping those balls in the air, those plates spinning. The secret, says Levitin, is that they have people to help them compartmentalise their day so that they do multiple things, but one at a time and extremely efficiently. One thing is placed in front of them and they are able to give it their full attention whilst others screen their calls, their diaries, and their e-mails. The super-successful and important, Levitin observes, usually have empty desks!
So what for those of us who do not have teams of helpers? Technology per se is not a bad thing; we just need to learn to use it more effectively. We must have self-discipline and self-blinker, switch off for periods of time to allow focus on the task in hand before starting the next thing. Control the daily deluge of information and we will become more efficient, not less, give ourselves more time, not less. Otherwise, we run the risk of becoming more tired, stressed and depleted and less creative and capable.
Our world faces major problems from international unrest and terrorism to ecological disaster and wealth distribution - can they be solved by those who consider the problem for 30 seconds and then check their e-mail and Twitter?