What is it about multitasking? Some see it as inefficient actionism, others as a tool to save time. Do we overextend ourselves every day, or can people multitask after all? You should be multitasking while playing the new Slotsgem. We do not want you to miss something.
We eat while we answer emails, and we answer emails while we cook. We watch a series while shopping on our smartphone or cuddle the cat while reading an article about multitasking.
In the early days of digitalization, the term “multitasking” was more familiar to programmers and computer professionals. The ability of an operating system to perform several tasks in parallel made computers pioneering. More than ten years ago, the term increasingly appeared in connection with the cognitive processes of the human brain. In the context of psychology, multitasking describes the ability to perform several activities at the same time.
If you multitask, you don’t do anything at the same time
Multitasking involves jumping back and forth between tasks. However, the definition of multitasking is misleading: when we multitask, we don’t do several things at the same time, but jump from one task to the next at high speed. This is also what computers do, even if their speed is many times faster than that of a human brain, and we are therefore unable to grasp it: To the user, it only seems as if several processes are running on the hard disk at the same time.
The ability to multitask in humans must be viewed in a differentiated way. To a certain extent, multitasking can indeed achieve the desired results. This becomes clear when driving a car: we can brake the car and operate the gearshift at the same time. This is because these are movements or thought processes that are subordinate to a single goal. In this case, to come to a safe stop at a red light.
Is multitasking efficient? This is what science says
According to studies, multitasking is not efficient. Numerous studies have investigated the effects of multitasking. Here is an overview of the most important ones:
- IQ drops: According to a study by the University of London’s Institute of Psychiatry, IQ drops by ten points when we answer an email and have a conversation at the same time. This drop is lower than when smoking cannabis or after a sleepless night. Presumably, the email is neither skillful, nor is the conversation satisfying for the other person, because we were just listening inattentively.
- Poor memory: Memory also suffers when multitasking due to the effort of doing a lot at once. In a study at Stanford University, scientists were not only able to prove that multitasking causes stress in the brain using a test with the game “Memory”: the experiment also showed that multitaskers have a poorer memory. Those test subjects who had previously stated in interviews that they multitasked very intensively, i.e., consumed several media at the same time, performed worse in the memory exercises than the rest.
- Weak attention: In addition to memory, the researchers tested the participants’ ability to pay attention and concentrate. The ability to quickly recognize changes in an image was examined. They used eye tracking to track the test subjects’ pupil reactions and recorded their brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG). The analyzed data showed that the multitaskers were less efficient. They needed more time and completed their tasks less attentively than the opposite group.
- Lower brain activity: In terms of brain activity, certain brain activity patterns related to episodic memory were not as pronounced in multitaskers as in people who rarely or never multitasked during the study. Episodic memory is a subtype of long-term memory and is responsible, among other things, for storing results that directly affect us.
- To put it simply, all the good and bad memories that we still remember years later. The smell of grandma’s cake or the death of a beloved pet. People who often multitask store fewer (and less attentive) memories from their lives.
