If you only do one thing this week … avoid multitasking

If you only do one thing this week … avoid multitasking

Are you reading this article while stirring a sachet of sugar into your latte, waiting to be put through on the phone, totting up a column on a spreadsheet, replying to an email and playing a game of computer chess?

And does such multitasking fill you with satisfaction at your mental flexibility, or leave you feeling slightly blurred?

If you're in the latter camp, don't panic. Just because technology grants us the ability to do 17 things at once doesn't mean we can do those 17 things well. In fact, the modern cult of multiplied activity has taken a bit of a hit of late. Concentrating on one thing at a time, it seems, beats multitasking when it comes to doing a job properly.

A study at the University of California found that multitasking impedes the brain's ability to absorb information, while research by Glenn Wilson, visiting professor of psychology at Gresham College, London, showed that people's problem-solving performance dropped by the equivalent of 10 IQ points when they multitasked, and their stress levels also rose.

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"People were not so hot at solving problems if there were various electronic distractions going on around them," Wilson says. "Males had more difficulty than females. Women were even more stressed than men but [their performance was] less affected by it."

And if you think that cannot apply to you because you're a whiz at juggling tasks, consider the recent findings of researchers at Stanford University in California: people who routinely multitask are the worst at ignoring irrelevant information, regularly switch betwen tasks and have poorer short-term memory – in short, all the skills needed to multitask successfully.

But why, exactly, does multitasking have such a negative effect? According to Dave Crenshaw, business coach and author of The Myth of Multitasking, the damage is caused by what he calls the "switching cost" – the time taken to switch from one task and refocus on another. "You actually take much longer to accomplish things, make more mistakes and increase your stress," he says.

He says the habit of multitasking is "extremely destructive", but admits it is difficult to combat because "people are so used to thinking this is a good way to behave."

All the same, there are things we can do to limit the damage, starting with a bit of self-acceptance. "You have to be at peace with the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day and seven days in a week, and there's only one of you," Crenshaw says. "Understand your limitation and be OK with that."

He also advises using what he calls "switch busters" to limit the temptation to multitask. These include turning off your phone at appropriate times (in meetings for example), turning off your monitor when you're on the phone, and scheduling recurring appointments with the people who consistently interrupt you so they keep any questions to themselves until that time. Plus he suggests having dedicated time to deal with different tasks, such as a one-hour slot every morning to sort through email.

Wilson agrees: "Don't multitask at all wherever possible," he says. "If you are doing something very important I would suggest it would be better to shut down all channels of communication so you can concentrate fully."

That might not be realistic when the office is frantic, but most of us overload ourselves to some extent when we don't strictly need to. "We do need to manage our time a bit better and focus on one thing at a time if possible," Wilson says. Something to think about before you get cracking on your next move on computer chess, perhaps.

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