Multitasking Can Make You Lose ... Um ... Focus

Okay, so as I was surfing the web trying to decide what to post tonight, I was also giving the dogs their nightly treats, making sure they went outside to powder their noses, I brought in some plants from the deck that keep falling over in the wind and probably need to come inside anyway because it's getting cold out there, finally settling on a story that not only looked interesting, but sort of fit in with my last few weeks ... all while watching the Pussycats and Missy Elliot on Dancing With the Stars ... which I must confess did capture almost my complete attention for the entire three minutes they were on the screen.

So why would a New York Times story on multitasking seem like the perfect post?

Isn't it obvious? It's what many of us do MOST of the time. And what I listed above is nothing compared with the additional tasks parents face.

Some people look at you funny if you want to complete one task before starting another. You can hear the comments under their breath ... lightweight ... wimp ... loser ...

Okay, maybe they aren't quite that harsh, but you must admit they at least look a little suspicious.

The story probably also resonated with me tonight because multitasking caught up with me today when I realized I'd made a pretty big mistake. Let me just say this about that ... making a mistake that costs money is not what you want to do during tough economic times. I also feel bad about it because I let a good friend down -- and I hate that. Thank goodness I have a very forgiving friend.

We are engaged in activities leading up to the election, getting ready for our annual meeting the following week, and I've had changes is staff that have left my department a little short handed right now.

Let me just say that the people in my department are terrific, and they are working their butts off. We also have a great staff, which accounts for why I can make a mistake and have the person who is inconvenienced the most be so understanding.

I kept replaying the day as I was driving home, so I'm sure I wasn't as alert as I could have been. Traffic seemed more congested than usual, and as I passed a number of cars I noticed the drivers were either talking on the phone or texting.

Traffic came to a complete stop a few times, and I had to wonder if it had anything to do with the drivers ahead of me who were possibly talking and texting, and therefore not really focused on the drive home.

Can we do it all? Can we multitask and not lose focus? I think the answer is obvious ... no.

As you are reading this article, are you listening to music or the radio? Yelling at your children? If you are looking at it online, are you e-mailing or instant-messaging at the same time? Checking stocks?

Since the 1990s, we’ve accepted multitasking without question. Virtually all of us spend part or most of our day either rapidly switching from one task to another or juggling two or more things at the same time.

While multitasking may seem to be saving time, psychologists, neuroscientists and others are finding that it can put us under a great deal of stress and actually make us less efficient.

Although doing many things at the same time — reading an article while listening to music, switching to check e-mail messages and talking on the phone — can be a way of making tasks more fun and energizing, “you have to keep in mind that you sacrifice focus when you do this,” said Edward M. Hallowell, a psychiatrist and author of “CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap!” (Ballantine, 2006). “Multitasking is shifting focus from one task to another in rapid succession. It gives the illusion that we’re simultaneously tasking, but we’re really not. It’s like playing tennis with three balls.” [...]

But despite what many of us think, you cannot simultaneously e-mail and talk on the phone. I think we’re all familiar with what Dr. Hallowell calls “e-mail voice,” when someone you’re talking to on the phone suddenly sounds, well, disengaged.

And as I thought ...

Their 2001 study, published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology, found that for all types of tasks, the participants lost time when they had to move back and forth from one undertaking to another, and that it took significantly longer to switch between the more complicated tasks.

Although the time it takes for our brains to switch tasks may be only a few seconds or less, it adds up. If we’re talking about doing two jobs that can require real concentration, like text-messaging and driving, it can be fatal.

The RAC Foundation, a British nonprofit organization that focuses on driving issues, asked 17 drivers, age 17 to 24, to use a driving simulator to see how texting affected driving.

The reaction time was around 35 percent slower when writing a text message — slower than driving drunk or stoned.

So what is the solution? Again ... it's so obvious!

So the next time the phone rings and a good friend is on the line, try this trick: Sit on the couch. Focus on the conversation. Don’t jump up, no matter how much you feel the need to clean the kitchen. It seems weird, but stick with it. You, too, can learn the art of single-tasking.

Ahhhhhhhh .....

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