You can, as the song says, bring home the bacon, fry it
up in a pan, do eight things at once (seven more than your
man). But as you'll discover, more is not merrier.
Multitasking has practically become an Olympic sport. But
new science suggests it's not always a winning game. A recent
study in the British Medical Journal, for example,
found that people talking on cell phones while driving were
four times more likely to have car accidents resulting in
hospitalization than other motorists. Road safety may be an
extreme example, but it underscores a larger point.
Research shows that we consistently perform better and faster
when tasks are done successively, rather than all at once.
A new study is shedding light on why. "We've identified a
kind of bottleneck in the prefrontal cortex of the brain that
forces people to address problems one after the other, even
if they're doing it so fast it feels simultaneous," says René
Marois, PhD, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience
at Vanderbilt University and coauthor of the study. "This
explains why previous data shows brain activity going down
instead of up with each new challenge; it's like a mental
traffic jam." Unfortunately, life isn't slowing down.
Feeling overwhelmed? Juggle your to-do list like a multitasking
pro with this expert advice.
Don't Try To Learn
"Results are always worse when you multitask, but in some
areas they're especially compromised," says Russell Poldrack,
PhD, associate professor of psychology at UCLA. Learning takes
a big hit, for instance. "Our research shows that if you try
to master something while splitting your attention, brain
activity switches regions; from memory building to short-term
habit making," he says.
A good rule of thumb is to multitask what you want to execute,
rather than absorb, and choose jobs where mistakes won't matter.
Pair Different Kinds Of Tasks
It may seem counterintuitive, but similarities make multitasking
harder, according to Poldrack. Before getting to the bottleneck,
mental processes often originate in different parts of the
brain. Pick two from the same area and they can become garbled.
For example, you may enjoy reading with music on, but if you
time yourself, you'll likely turn the pages much faster when
there are no lyrics to distract you from the text.
Try to match projects with different modalities; like reviewing
a report while on the stationary bike.
Prioritize
Israeli Air Force cadets trained to pay attention to specific
aspects of a video game performed better in actual flight
than others who just played the game, one study showed. "Focusing
on each task's relative importance allows you to allocate
your resources for maximum efficiency," says Poldrack.
Make One Job Routine
Tech-dexterous teenagers are probably no better wired to
ace computer games than the rest of us; they've just spent
more time practicing with their gadgets, says Marois. Researchers
believe that if you repeat a set of skills over and over in
exactly the same order and way, you will get noticeably better.
Try to make at least one task something you do all the time.
This allows you to fit the others into an already established
pattern.
