Think You’re Good At Multitasking? That’s Not Something To Brag About and Here’s Why

If you’re one of those people who think you are a good multi-tasker, who can do several things at once, you might have to think again. New studies have shown that multi-tasking harms the cognitive part of your brain that helps you think and create emotions.

-By Nikki Main

According to Georgetown Professor Cal Newport, we are often side tracked by the small mundane tasks such as answering an email. However, it’s the deep tasks that get us noticed, promoted at work, and increase our overall IQ. In Newport’s book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World he mentions that bouncing from task to task prevents the individual from focusing. The more distracted you are, the less comfortable you’ll be doing deep work.

Deep work involves working on a project, it could be at home or at work. But working on a project that you put all your energy into and really focus on and spend a large amount of time only thinking about that one thing. Whereas when we are multi-tasking, we are bouncing from project to project, often focusing on the next thing we must do before we’ve even finished the project we are currently working on.

Although we may feel a sense of accomplishment from completing several small projects, our minds are being dumbed down while we are multi-tasking. Since our brains weren’t designed to multi-task, studies have shown that subjects who multi-task saw an IQ drop similar to that of someone who missed a night of sleep. If you are a serious multi-tasker, you might have done intense long-term damage. A study has shown through MRI scans on multi-taskers that they had less brain density in areas that control empathy and emotions.

Before you decide to take up several tasks at once, think about the following negative attributes to multi-tasking.

2. Multi-tasking leads to as much as a 40% drop in productivity, increased stress and a 10% lower IQ

2. When something interrupts you such as checking an email, checking Facebook, or stopping to chat with someone, you are not only multi-tasking, but it now will take you an average of 15 minutes to delve back into the task you were focused on.

3. Only an average of 2% of people can multi-task successfully.

4. Although we feel accomplished by doing several things at once we are actually accomplishing less that if we just focused on one task at a time.

5. Focusing on a single task at a time is likely to get you a promotion at work or even increase your IQ.

Before you check your email, talk to your coworker, pick up several tasks at once, think about the long-term effects it will have on you. The outcome is harsher than you would think.

-N.M.