Don't Be Fooled by the Multitasking

Nilesh Jain (Assistant Manager) (1064 Points)

07 February 2011  

Don't Be Fooled by the Multitasking Myth

You know that feeling of accomplishment that comes from working on many things at the same time? It's just an illusion. Or as researchers have discovered: we may feel like we're being productive but in fact we're just doing many things poorly.

The human brain is not built to process, record, learn or imagine many different things at once. When multitasking we are not permitting our brain to give its full attention to the task at hand. Our brain is still functioning at high intensity, which creates the illusion of efficiency, but we are not performing the job as well as we think we are.

Along with poor performance, multitasking robs us of learning and memory formation processes which are required to develop intelligence.