that handling an incomingmessage ate up
25minutes onaverage.
Typically, employees take about five
minutes to switch their focus, says Shamsi
Iqbal, one of the study’s researchers. “It
breaks your normal flowof work,” she says.
Responding consumes another 10minutes,
followed by 10 to 15minutes of essentially
getting back on track. In 27 percent of the
interruptions, employees took more than
twohours to resume their original task.
Of course,many of us thinkwe’re the ex-
ception, capableofhandling several tasksat
once. Ina2006Basex survey involving500
people, 50 percent said they wrote e-mails
or instantmessagesduringconferencecalls.
(And those are the ones who fessed up.)
Somedays,multitasking is vital tobusiness
efficien y, saysAdamRetsky, awebdesign-
er in Encino, California, who this spring
was on hyperdrive, juggling his full-time
businessplusanadditional25hoursaweek
of project management for another firm.
“For me, multitasking is on the phone,” he
says. “I can handlemultiple phone calls, e-
mail, and instantmessaging all at the same
time before I blow a gasket. It takes a lot to
pushme over the edge.” Still, like Foringer,
Retsky is striving to single-task. “Peoplecan
tell,” he says, regarding his multitasking
phone conversations. “You seem distracted
— there are delayed answers.”Multitasking
may also decrease what you can remember
later, Poldrack says. “Even if you can learn
someof it, itwill changewhat you learnand
make it harder for you toaccess later on.”
While conducting his research, which
waspublished lastyear,Poldrackused func-
tional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging)
to track blood flow in the brain, revealing
which regions were activated as partici-
pantsengaged invarious tasks.Byusing the
technology, researchers were able to show
that multitasking participants stored new
information in a part of the brainwhere it
couldn’t be applied later inas fl xibleor so-
phisticatedof away.
But with multitasking, not all tasks are
equal, Poldrack says. It’s most dif
fi
cult to
handletwoactivitiesthatrelyonsimilarcog-
nitive skills, such as reading an e-mail and
talking to someone, both language-based
activities. Reading e-mail and listening to
music would be easier, he explains. Talking
while walking is likely easiest because nei-
ther requireshigh-level brain function.
But don’t assume that driving and talk-
ingona cell phone are similarly instinctive.
“The use of cell phones during driving is
dangerous, and it might be more danger-
ous in some populations than others,” says
ArthurKramer, apsychologyprofessor and
longtime cell-phone researcher at the Uni-
versityof Illinois’sBeckman Institute.
Inone study,Kramer flic ed imagesonto
a screen in frontof youngerdrivers (average
age: 21) andolder drivers (average age: 68)
while they chattedona cell phone.His goal
was to seewhether they coulddistinguish a
simple change, suchas abright sign, froma
significant change, such as a child running
into the street. Both groups exhibited dif-
fi ultieswhenusing theirphones.Theolder
drivers were less able to detect significant
