Apparently is does. But not knowing that it makes you stupid... is what makes you stupid. Did you follow that?
All week I have been feeling so productive because I have been on a multitasking streak. I have the privilege of being on a number of committees at work and I have a lot (too many if you ask my boss) of outstanding project that are either near completion, ongoing, not yet started, or almost there but not quite 100%. All the while I am trying to complete these projects I am also trying to stay on top of our talent networks. Oh, and did I mention I have a life outside of Sodexo too? A rather full life with 2 children who have to either be at swim team or soccer practice every night of the week.
I know the key to multitasking is prioritizing. It is the only way to multitask. Prioritizing is what I find to be a challenge. To me there is not one thing that is more important than the other at work. Finalizing the AV contract for our annual meeting is just as important as updating our Facilities microsite to promote our support for an upcoming SHPE conference (Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers) and both of these projects are as important as having all of our ducks in a row for our new employee referral program that we are launching next Wednesday (for a sneak peak at our Sodexo Star Finder landing page click here). And everything I do during the day at work is as important as my children's swim team practice. Of course, if it came right down to it my family comes first (always) and I am lucky to have a boss who shares this "family first" mentality. I am lucky that I am able to multitask well enough to have both a family and a career.
So back to multitasking making us stupid.
On my way home from the dermatologist this morning (my appointment was at 7:45 AM and the office was packed so I know I am not the only one who is trying to fit it all in) I was listening to NPR and on the Morning Edition they talked about multitasking and how it makes you stupid. You can multitask too and listen to it while you read this blog post if you'd like. Even though technology allows us to do more at the same time, juggling tasks can make our brains "lose connections to important information." Which means it actually takes us longer to complete a task because we have to remind our brains what we were working on. The segment actually focused on teens but multitasking is not generation bias... in fact they even said we all fall under the "Generation M" as in Generation Multitasking. We all often switch between phone, work, family, music, television, and e-mail and all of this switching around slows down our brain. It makes us stupid.
Researcher, David Meyer (who was the guest on today's show) at the University of Michigan has spent the past few decades studying multitasking — mostly in adults. "For tasks that are at all complicated, no matter how good you have become at multitasking, you're still going to suffer hits against your performance. You will be worse compared to if you were actually concentrating from start to finish on the task," Meyer says. "Multitasking causes a kind of brownout in the brain," Meyer says. "All the lights go dim because there just isn't enough power to go around. So, the brain starts shutting things down." To restore those connections, Meyer says, "we have to repeat much of the thought process that created them in the first place."
Great. So all week I thought I was movin' and groovin' and come to find out I'm not as good as I think I am at doing several things at once. While working on several projects at once has become a workplace standard, experts now say that multitasking actually takes longer than doing things one at a time.
So for those of you who are looking for a job and you have, "...the ability to efficiently multitask." on your resume (like I do) maybe you should think about your choice of words. Something like, "the ability to work efficiently under tight deadlines in an organized and professional manner" might be more appropriate.
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