Workplace

You may pride yourself on the ability to juggle multiple tasks, said Jon Hamilton in NPR.com. But MIT researchers say your multitasking is a myth. You might think you’re doing two things at once, but in fact you’re just switching attention from one thing to the next very quickly, says Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at MIT. Because similar tasks compete for resources from the same part of the brain, one task always wins. “Think about writing an e-mail and talking on the phone at the same time,” says Miller. It’s nearly impossible.

We’ve all been on the phone with someone who suddenly seems disengaged, said Alina Tugend in The New York Times. That’s the “e-mail voice,” says Edward M. Hallowell, author of CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! But the real problem with multitasking isn’t its rudeness. Multitasking just isn’t very efficient. In fact, researchers say that we’ve grown so accustomed to multitasking that we can lose our ability to concentrate even on a single task. “We need to re-create boundaries,” says Hallowell. Stop typing and try listening. You’ll be surprised by how much you accomplish when you “single-task.”

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