Multitasking or marijuana?

Take a look at this picture. The character on the right is a bear. It so happened that he smokes marijuana (do not ask where he took it. I do not want to know). The woman on the left I called Sally. Except that she has five hands, Sally is a completely ordinary, unremarkable business woman. Sally, like many other ordinary business women, is also an inveterate multitask. In the picture, she keeps her laptop, prepares some dessert, and even balances a bowl with some kind of scorching hot soup, probably seafood. And now the main question. Suppose Sally and the bear have the same level of intelligence (this is a very smart bear), then which of them will show the best result when testing cognitive activity? In other words, if I was interested in mental activity, what is worse for me: to be multitasking or to jam the joint?

Disclaimer: we are against drugs! Drugs are evil!

Daniel Levitin, a writer and neuroscientist, in his book The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload claims that multitasking is worse (in terms of mental activity ... not sure about the social consequences) than smoking marijuana:

“... the main component of marijuana, cannabinol (cannabinol), activates certain receptors in the brain and deeply interferes with our memory and our ability to simultaneously concentrate on several tasks. [Someone named] Wilson proved that the decline in cognitive abilities due to multitasking even exceeded the decline in cognitive abilities from smoking marijuana. ”

To figure out what multitasking is so bad about, let's take a quick look at the mechanics of human attention.
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Balls and switches

Try to remember the first hours of your day. What did you eat for breakfast? What drank? What about brushing after waking up? I think most of you will remember all these details without any problems.

Now let's complicate the task. Can you remember the number of tiles on the floor of a bathroom or kitchen? Number of steps to your apartment or office? The size and shape of blades of grass, making their way into asphalt cracks at the entrance? Most of you (sincerely hope) will not remember.

In the stories about Sherlock Holmes, the detective plays over Watson because he did not count the number of steps (seventeen) to an apartment on Baker Street 221B. But Watson’s reaction was natural.

Most people do not care how many steps they climb every day. So why pay attention to it? Attention - the resource is limited.

Monkey business

In terms of data processing, brains are many times weaker than the slowest supercomputer. We compensate for this disadvantage due to the high selectivity of attention.

This thesis is often illustrated for first-year students of the psychological faculty through such videos. Try, without cheating, honestly calculate how many times the team in the WHITE passed the ball?



If you approached the task seriously, you probably did not notice the black bear (this time without marijuana), who crossed the whole scene. Personally, I do not notice him even knowing that he is there. By focusing on something, you stop noticing everything else.

Now see now no

According to Levitin, multitasking does not just make you more stupid. It is also impossible. Or, more precisely, it does not work the way most of us think.

You say: “ What nonsense. I always do several tasks at the same time. I talk on the phone while driving. I cook the sauce while I cook the spaghetti. I correspond with friends while sitting at the meeting . ”

Yes, we can perform several actions in one period of time. But we never do anything at the same time:

“Everyone wants to believe that we can do several things at the same time, and that our attention is infinite, but this is a stable myth. In fact, our attention quickly switches from one task to another. As a result, we don’t pay enough attention to any business, and reduce the quality of attention paid to each task. ”

When multitasking our attention is forced to quickly jump back and forth, like a searchlight on the watchtower. These constant switching costs our brain a lot:

“Forcing the brain to switch attention from one activity to another leads to the burning of oxygenated glucose in the frontal cortex and striatum, but this is the“ fuel ”we need to focus on the task. In addition, fast and frequent switching causes the brain to burn "fuel" so quickly that it soon becomes a feeling of exhaustion and disorientation. We literally deplete the nutrients in the brain. ”

But the bad news doesn't end there.

Multitasking triggers the production of cortisol, a stress hormone. As a result, task juggling increases anxiety and worsens mood. Cortisol also interferes with learning: when students watch TV during classes, information is not stored in the right sections of the brain.

Multitasking harms our ability to make decisions. When switching, we make micro decisions, and as a result, for important occasions in life, we have less “decision-making energy”:

“The situation is aggravated by the fact that multitasking requires decision-making. Should I reply to a message, or ignore? How to answer it? How to send this email? Do I continue to work on the current task, or stop? Decision making is also very stressful to our neuroresources, and small decisions consume as much energy as large ones. First and foremost, we lose self-control. This quickly develops into a state of exhaustion, and as a result, having made many unimportant decisions, we can make the wrong decision in something important. ”

To summarize, multitasking:

• Degrades the quality of attention.
• Faster tires
• Increases stress and mood
• Reduces learning effectiveness
• Leads to making bad decisions in the present and future

Oh. But since multitasking is so bad, why haven't we abandoned it yet?

Darling it's so nice

According to Levitin, we do not refuse multitasking for several reasons.
First, it is part of our evolution. The ability to notice a red edible fruit in the more often jungle, or a poisonous creature crawling under your feet, was a matter of life and death.
That is, our brain is adapted to respond to new and distracting information:

“The brain section responsible for focusing on the task is easily distracted by some remarkable new objects. With multitasking, we unknowingly enter the addiction cycle, since novelty centers in the brain are rewarded for processing new stimuli, to the detriment of our frontal cortex, which does not want to give up the current task and receives a reward for long efforts and attention.

Another reason for our love for multitasking is our feelings from it:

“You think people will understand that they are not good at multitasking and will refuse it. But a cognitive illusion arises, partly supported by a dopamine-adrenaline feedback loop, due to which multi-taskers are very pleased with themselves. ”

Part of the blame lies in the corporate culture, which often encourages employees to counterproductive behavior:

“... at work, people mistakenly encourage people to be multitasking. ... Many managers impose rules like “You must answer a letter within 15 minutes” or “You must keep the chat window open,” but this causes you to interrupt your work, fragment attention, empty resources of the frontal cortex, which tens of thousands years evolved with a focus on focusing on the current task. ”

Taking into account all the above, the last question arises. If multitasking doesn't work, what should we do with it?

And now what?

In the book of Levitin many ideas are proposed, we will not describe them in detail here. Here are just examples of how you can manage your multitasking, keep attention, increase your creative abilities and improve the overall quality of life:

• Check emails once a day using services like Boomerang
• Transfer the tasks you need to complete from the working memory to the cards (to later process in the style of Getting Things Done)
• Organize your schedule according to the “metronome” principle so that it switches you between demanding concentration and relaxing tasks (for example, after working at a computer you can take a shower or walk in the forest). We need the latter for recuperation; and multitasking is not
• Store information not in the brain, but in the environment, using the so-called Gibsonian affordances
• For work and entertainment, select different spaces or computer environments.
• In the most important day hours, discard everything that is distracting (mail, Internet, phone calls, correspondence, etc.)

But first of all you need to understand: multitasking does not work.