Dear Mom,
I think you might find this interesting.
The Myth of Multi-tasking – by Helen Kirwan-Taylor
Tyler
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Dear Tyler
This was excellent! And, is it a call . . . wait a minute. . . I need to answer the phone. . . There, I’m back. Is it a call to your mother . . . Let me grab a pencil here. I gotta write down what I need to get at the grocery store on the way home . . . OK. Is this a call you your mother to stop . . . Isn’t there a better word I can use here instead of ‘stop’? Better check Dictionary.com. Nope. OK. Where was I? Is this a call to your mother to stop multi-tasking? :-)
Humbly,
Your Scattered-All-Over-The-Place Mother (who needs to go to a meeting in a couple of minutes — if she can stop reading e-mail, writing on her blog, surfing the net, posting on Twitter, checking out Facebook, and occasionally doing work)
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I read the article. Here’s what I learned:
- Multi-taskers can’t focus — or remember.
- Multi-tasking leads to a mild form of ADD.
- Multi-tasking feels good because it releases dopamine.
- Multi-tasking is ‘no’ tasking at all because it takes place in the shallow front part of the brain which is least associated with cognitive thinking.
- A study done for HP reported that the IQ of knowledge workers distracted by email and phone calls fell 10 points — twice the decline reported by marijuana smokers!
- Multi-tasking makes you feel good because you are under the illusion that you are working.
- It takes 25 minutes to return to the original task after multi-tasking.
Maybe multi-tasking isn’t all what it’s cracked up to be . . .