Super skill or super drain? The effects of multitasking on our brain.
Occupational therapist, mindfulness teacher and executive coach, Anna Croucher explores how we can break our addiction and stop multitasking.
I remember at one stage in my career referencing 'multitasking' as a strength in interviews. It was something I thought would seal the deal showing I was a cut above the rest with my ability to flit quickly and get stuff done!
Nowadays I am dreadful at multitasking… and proud of it!
In fact, as a long-term mindfulness practitioner, I have taught myself NOT to multitask. Multitasking is the process of working on two or more things simultaneously, changing between them frequently, or doing a few things in quick succession, without a pause, or much of a breath!
However, it really should be called task-switching as the research shows that it's really hard to do more than one thing at once. Only 2% are super task switchers, which means their performance won't be negatively impacted by changing task. Note this doesn’t mean that they will do better, they just wont do worse.
The 98% of us mere mortals left cannot multitask without it affecting the outcome of what we are doing. The irony is that it is addictive because it's buzzy and it feels like we are working really hard… But without realising we are NOT getting the results!
What happens when we multitask
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