34 AMERICANWAY
NOVEMBER 1 2007
ILLUSTRATIONBYGARYTAXALI
B R A I N F R E E Z E
CAll It MultItAskINg REhAb.
Gina
Foringer isn’t quitegoing cold turkey, but
she’s rationed herself in recent months.
She’s ditched one of her two personal
digital assistants. And when she drives,
she deposits her cell phone in the back-
seat,purposelyoutof reach—mostof the
time, at least.
These are significant steps for the 39-
year-old, who is an executive officer for a
suburbanD.C.–based constructionman-
agement and environmental company as
well as the mother of a seven-year-old
daughter. Foringer used to pride herself
on crafting an e-mail on one personal
digital device while hammering out the
message’s precise wording with an em-
ployeeon theother. Still, ingrainedhabits
conference call from the sidelines of our child’s soccer game. We
canwritea reportwhile finalizinganotherbusinessdeal,negotiated
over cell phoneand e-mail.
Business leaders, far from being impressed, are becoming in-
creasingly concerned that multitasking can devolve intomindless
spinning, says Jonathan Spira, CEO and chief analyst at Basex, a
knowledge-economy research firm headquartered
in New York
City. “You only think you aremore productive,” he says. “You’re re-
allydrinking theKool-Aidofproductivity.”Over time, the relentless
intrusions that fuel freneticmultitasking can reallyaddup, he says.
Theaverageamountof timeaworker loseseachday tounimportant
interruptions—many of them of the technological variety, such as
instant messaging, vibrating pagers, and so on— is 2.1 hours, ac-
cording to aBasex survey of slightlymore than 1,000workers that
wasconducted in2004and2005.Theprojectedannual cost toU.S.
businesses:$588billion.
IN REAlItY,
the brain canmake only one decision at a time, says
Russell Poldrack, an associate professor of psychology at the Uni-
versity of California, Los Angeles, where he researches multitask-
ing. If you switch tasks, your brain has to close out that task and
bootupanother,hesays. “Youarenotmultitasking—you’reswitch-
ingback and forth. The reason thatmultitasking is bad cognitively
is that youbasicallywaste timedoing that switching.”
Critical recovery time is also lost, a pattern illuminated by re-
search involving Microsoft employees that was presented earlier
thisyear.By tracking thecomputeractivityof27Microsoft employ-
ees for twoweeks (nearly 2,300 hours in total), researchers found
Focus
are diffi ult to shed. The recoveringmultitasker admits toorganiz-
ing paperworkwhile on a conference call or using the opportunity
to clean out her spam folder. “I enjoy it,” she says. “I like the feel-
ing of accomplishment I get when I can do two to three things to
completionat the same time.”
Anumber of recent studies, though, illustrate the ineffectiveness
and thepotential risks of the jugglingact thatwe callmultitasking.
One study reveals that thepractice canundercut learning. Another
demonstrateshow it causes thebrain todevelopaneuralbottleneck
and become unable to process even two simple tasks simultane-
ously.As fordriverswho insist they can safelyweave through traffic
while chattingon their cell phone, studies say forget about it.
Even so,many of us persist. Nowwe cannot only sort the laun-
dry while we chat with a friend but also dial into an international
If you thinkmultitasking is the key
togettingmore accomplishedduring
yourworkday, guess again. It’s
actually awaste of time, energy, and
money.
ByCharlotteHuff
