By Jonathan Weiss I
Disclaimer: Before reading this, please know that I’m a total hypocrite. Me writing an article on multitasking is like Ronald McDonald preaching healthy eating. My morning routine consists of me brushing my teeth, doing laundry, listening to Flying Lotus, and plotting world domination. All at once. However, addressing my multitasking habit has made me a much more mindful person, for reasons I’ll explain.
Bonus challenge:
- Start a stopwatch.
- See if you can make it through this article getting distracted by the hyperlinks. I know, diabolical, right?
The problem
Chronic multitaskers experience the same IQ decline as people who pulled all-nighters, according to a study by the University of London. Some participants’ IQ dropped by 15 points, leaving them with the average IQ of an 8-year-old.
Multitasking is not a skill that you can practice. People who frequently multitask are slower at switching between tasks than those who don’t multitask. A study by the University of Utah found that if you think you’re good at multitasking, you’re more likely to be terrible at it.
Multitasking is also a nightmare for your health. It increases the production of cortisol, the stress hormone, and adrenaline, the fight-or-flight hormone, overstimulating your brain and scrambling your thinking. Your prefrontal cortex gets easily hijacked by a sense of novelty; therefore, multitasking rewards your brain for losing focus and searching for external stimulation.
The brain
Why can’t we multitask? Mental juggling—the attempt to do two tasks simultaneously or do two or more tasks in rapid succession—literally splits your brain in half. The prefrontal cortex is great at coordinating your brain to achieve a single goal. Juggling multiple tasks forces the left and right hemispheres of the brain to work independently. Scientists at the INSERM in Paris discovered that this is why we make three times more mistakes when given two simultaneous goals.
According to Meyer, Evans and Rubinstein, the brain’s “executive control” processes consist of “goal shifting” (“I want to do this now instead of that”) and “rule activation” (“I’m turning off the rules for that and turning on the rules for this”). These processes allow us to switch between tasks without thinking. Although switch costs can be small—sometimes just a fraction of a second—the cost becomes concerning when we switch repeatedly between tasks. According to Meyer, even brief mental blocks from task-shifting can make you more error-prone and cost 40 percent of your productive time.
Multitasking has implications not only for productivity but also for learning. After all, you probably don’t want to do your homework with the IQ of a sleep-deprived 8-year-old. Ophir, Nass, and Wagner showed that learning while distracted alters the brain’s learning processes. Take listening to background music as an example. Background music is actually a great motivator for simple and mundane tasks because it boosts your mood. But you shouldn’t listen to music while learning flashcards; music burdens your working memory.
Creativity may also decline when you multitask. Multitasking reduces adaptive problem solving and the “flexible application of knowledge”—keystones of a holistic education. However, chronic multitaskers often tend to treat the information presented to them with equal weight rather than steadily focusing on selective pieces; the unexpected integration of diverse information is crucial to creativity. Therefore, it’s not a total stretch to say that multitaskers’ creativity may benefit from “bottom-up attentional control and exploratory information processing.” All in all, though, the big-picture downsides of multitasking, like IQ decline and scrambled thinking, just aren’t worth it.
So multitasking can make you less smart, energetic, and creative. Not good. So what should you do?
The solution
It’s important to emphasize that multitasking is much easier with two simple tasks that are distinct from each other. It’s probably fine to walk while eating or talk to a friend while doing the laundry. In fact, a study at the University of Florida found that people peddled exercise bikes 25% faster if they simultaneously had to solve math problems—without doing any worse on the math. However, the authors speculated that the participants’ anticipation of the task increased arousal in the brain, causing the efficiency boost but also draining them of extra energy.
It’s very clear that you shouldn’t mix complicated and similar tasks—like chatting on the phone while writing an email. Your prefrontal cortex will go nuts trying to regulate your verbal thinking processes. Instead, try planning out your tasks in advance and group them by type. For example, allot 20 minutes to respond to all your email, followed by 20 minutes to chat on the phone, followed by 10 minutes to sort your tasks for the next day. Make sure to plan breaks between these tasks, which has its own important benefits.
I would argue that reducing the habit of multitasking is key to increasing mindfulness, “the ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.”
It’s not easy to stop. Remember that multitasking triggers the release of dopamine and hijacks the brain’s reward system. But it’s not hopeless. As I’ve tried to multitask less, I’ve rediscovered the enjoyment inherent in being fully present in one single task.
Your phone is a huge culprit. Having noticed the stress and confusion that receiving notifications triggers while trying to work, I put my phone in a different room when I work. I also customized my notifications so that only important interruptions (calls, for example) distract me. I deleted my news and social media apps and put a screen time limit on the website versions. Finally, I put my phone in grayscale to prevent the flashy colors and badges from hijacking my prefrontal cortex. It took a while to convince myself, but I’ve really noticed improvements to my focus and energy.
I think the key here is that you’re not going to be able to quit multitasking immediately. In fact, I’m not recommending that you quit multitasking altogether. Listening to music or talking to a friend can help motivate you through boring and simple tasks. Instead, start by eliminating the habits that cause you the most stress. Then reap the benefits and go from there!
Bonus Challenge, continued: Stop your stopwatch. Some questions:
- How long did it take you to read this article?
- If it took you longer than 4-7 minutes, I’m going to guess that you clicked a hyperlink or two while reading. Am I right?
