Does Multi-Tasking Really Make a Person More Productive - Research Paper Example

? Multitasking Efficiency for those with and without ADD/ADHD Cinthia Morton Mrs. Thomas Psychology, Period 2 10 May Society has gone through lot of changes over the past decades. Each year, seems to bring a new trend. Of late, there has been a heavy rise in multitasking as a trend in personal and professional lives of people. Whenever possible every individual tries to attempt multitasking when he or she has to finish many tasks in a short period. When the deadlines have to be met, the pace of the work increases. In such scenarios, multi-tasking is needed. The definition of multitasking is “deal with more than one task at the same time” (Oxford Dictionary). It is debatable if multitasking is productive or not. That depends upon what type of tasks one person is engaged in. In daily activities, many examples can be observed to give evidence of multitasking. Someone is talking on cell phone while finishing lunch. Listening to radio while driving, listening to music while exercising, watching TV while checking mails or chewing gum when walking on the road are very common examples of multitasking in young adult. Moms are the best example of ultimate multitasking individuals – cooking, dishwashing, taking care of babies, talking on phone, watching television, planning for tomorrow’s activities, so many tasks together they manage at once. “It seems from our survey, that everybody is doing some amount of multitasking. It’s hard to find people who don’t multi-task, but it’s all about the intensity”. (Ophir, 2009) The important point to note is that multitasking not only brings inefficiency, but can also pose health risks. Where multitasking is detrimental to a perfectly healthy person, it is even more difficult to people with disorders such as ADD/ADHD. The discussion below will highlight some key observations and examples of multitasking, its impact, difficulty for ADD/ADHD affected people and some means to manage multitasking better. During the National Public Radio discussion about multitasking and productivity, it was concluded that multitasking does not always mean higher productivity. Dr. Nass pointed out that the younger generations are showing an enormous desire to multitask. He also stated that, their “recent research has suggested that if women are watching television while they are breastfeeding, the babies are actually spending an enormous amount of time watching Television in their later life” (Nass 2009). Additionally, different patterns of multitasking are seen in different generations. Rocketing use of computer, internet, mobile phones, and iPods is affecting their attention span. Younger society is getting shaped to multitask in their day to day activities. There is no such thing as “productive multi-tasking” because in order to do an efficient job, an individual should focus solely on one task for better results. “Multitaskers were just lousy at everything…I was sure they had some secret ability. But it turns out that high multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy” (Nass 2009). According to New York Times summery, National Academy of Sciences has published a study (August 2009) where in, 100 college students were assessed as high or low in multitasking. The students were monitored for their focus, memory and distractibility. And they had drawn a conclusion that Multitasking fails its practitioner currently and possibly long term. In order to know the impact of multitasking, researcher had asked the participants to switch the task in between and then measure how much time is lost by switching. They concluded that candidates were slower when they had to switch the task than when they had to repeat the same. Research has shown that when an individual is switching between two tasks, it takes longer mentally to complete tasks efficiently. (R. Roger. S. Monsell, 1995). In another study, researcher found that candidates lost lot of time when they switched between multiple tasks and lost even more time as the tasks became increasingly complex. (Rubinstein, Evans, Meyer, 2001). In this modern era, when so many technologies are available on fingertips, they have a great ability to distract. Few examples are Facebook, Twitter, emails, blogs etc. It can be very difficult to focus on one thing when the surrounding environment is full of distractions. Other common example is telephone. How disturbing it can be, when somebody is trying to focus on something and the phone rings? So, all the modern tools that are used as a medium of communication have a great potential of distraction. Also, being in touch with others makes people feel special. People crave for that attention and so forcibly involve themselves into this media of communication like emails, chat, sms, etc. This mental state definitely affects the quality of the work done and hence causes disappointments in results. The main limitation of multitasking is lack of concentration on two or more things at the same time. Every person has a different ability to focus. It often leads to switching over from one task to other leading to mistakes and errors (J.Sinton, Research international) so even if the tasks are relatively easier, trying to do many things together could not be beneficial. The accomplished task will not have superior quality. And low quality means hampered productivity. “When they’re in situations where there are multiple sources of information coming from the external world or emerging out of memory, they’re not able to filter out what’s not relevant to their current goal. That failure to filter means they’re slowed down by that irrelevant information.” said Anthony Wagner (2009). “The high multitaskers are always attempting to gather information in front of them from available sources, but they can’t store them separately in their mind” (Ophir, 2009)”They are suckers for irrelevancy” (Nass, 2009). Multitasking affects cognitive processes of the brain over a longer period. Chronic multitasking leads to major health risks like mental burnout, anxiety and sometimes depression too. This was highlighted by Dr Mayer at United Press International. This issue is gaining much attention especially among behavioral scientists, anthropologists and healthcare professionals. “Chronic multitasking is the issue bothering to all. Especially, media-multitasking where people are using many streams of information, at the same time, that is unrelated” (Nass, 2009). According to Professor John Medina(2008), who has mentioned in his book,” Brain Rules” that the human brain naturally focuses on each concept sequentially. It may sound confusing and as already been mentioned above, few activities can be done together which requires no attention, like walking and talking can be done together. Brain controls the heartbeat when one reads the book. While complex multitasking, it becomes difficult to pay attention to all the tasks because brain’s attention ability is not capable of multitasking. Multitasking saves lot of time and produces more time for more multitasking. But, it generates lot of stress to the human body eventually leading to inefficient task results. New York Times has an interesting article mentioning about multiple researches done on multitasking. “Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes". David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist said in an interview with the NYT (2007). "Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ability to process information" Worldwide, lots of studies have been done stating that “Do multitasking but don’t expect learning”. Recently in one of the surveys, it has been reported that the learning ability of the individual is remarkably affected when he attempted to do many tasks at once. This was reported by (Ars technica, 2006). It is already been mentioned that human brains are not very good at multitasking. Multitasking can be especially troublesome for those with attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactive disorder, commonly called as ADD/ADHD. One of the most important features of ADHD is “Persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that is more frequently displayed and is more severe than is typically observed in individuals at comparable level of development”. (DSM-IV Text Revision Definition - ADHD) People with this disorder generally have trouble in organizing themselves, staying focused, making realistic plans, and thinking before acting. They overlook the details and are easily distracted, and more likely to stay off task longer than normal individual. (American Psychological Association) These people lack in monitoring their performance and prioritization so it is difficult for them to accomplish any task in assigned time at work place. These people take more time in transitioning one task to another. People with this disorder can surely multitask, when the task are related and have common aim but it is harder for them to move to totally different task. They can stick to one task and finish it but if there is any distraction they cannot deal with it and unable to accomplish ongoing task. They need more time to restart their thought process to resume into previous task. ADD people feel comfortable multitasking because these changing situations correlate their hyperactive mind. But it does not help them much in achieving their goals. Similarly, ADHD individual show deficit in neurological domains (Barkley, Grodzinsky, Diamond, 1992) hence they lack in their higher order planning tasks and show impairments in their planning ability, self monitoring and problem solving. ADHD individual shows specific deficit in internal time regulation (Barkley 1997a). They have deficient sense of time (Dooling-Litfin 1997) so for them it is very difficult to accomplish any task in given time. And hence productive multitasking is next to impossible for such people. However, considering the fast pace of life and the available technologies, multitasking is many times unavoidable in today’s world and there is need to find ways to manage it better. Following are a few tips to improve the focus on the high valued task – To do list: Make a list of things you need to do in a certain time. This helps in remembering and focusing on high valued tasks. Note down the accomplished task at the end of the day with their relative importance Determine the important tasks for each day that definitely need to be accomplished. This helps in focusing on each task. Judge yourself correctly and what all are the things which are important to contribute in your success. Give importance to those to achieve the goals correctly. Balance the workload to reduce the work stress. Be honest to yourself if you want to create focus in the surrounding environments. Television and music players in the study room may be costing more time that anyone can even guess. One other method to manage multiple tasks is to do chunking of work, rather than multitasking. In his article, F. John Reh (Quoted in Biomedicine) suggests a work chunking method which involves setting aside a time for a particular task and focusing only on that task at the planned time. This works better than working on multiple things at the same time. As Dr. Ophir stated, (2009) “The big take-away from me is to try to build periods of focus, to create times you are really focused on one thing”. Having so many responsibilities, different roles and accountability, ball definitely falls into the Multitasking court. This situation is unavoidable, but what is avoidable is the work style. So, if you find yourself multitasking and you want to be productive too, take a look at the tasks that need to be done, prioritize them, try to eliminate all possible distractions, give time to your insight and try to focus on one task at a time. Effective time management techniques such as chunking can be used to execute multiple tasks rather than multitasking. Reference Attention deficit hyperactive disorder, Essential Features (n.d.) DSM-IV Text Revision online. Definition, retrieved from https://www.msu.edu/course/cep/888/ADHD%20files/DSM-IV.htm ADHD,(n.d.).Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. American Psychological Association. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/topics/adhd/index.aspx Barkley. A. Grodzinsky, G. & DePaul, G. J. (1992). Frontal lobe functions in attention deficit disorder with and without hyperactivity: A review and research report. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 20(2), 163–188. Barkley, R. A. (1997a). Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD. Psychological Bulletin, 121(1), 65–94. Dooling-Litfin, J. K. (1997). Time perception in children with ADHD. ADHD Report, 5, 13–16. John Reh. (n.d.). Don’t Multi-task when you can use chunking. Retrieved from http://management.about.com/od/yourself/a/chunking1106.htm Mayer D. (n.d.).Multi Tasking Creates Health Problems. United press international. Retrieved from http://www.applesforhealth.com/HealthyBusiness/multihealth3.html Mayer D.E (25March 2007).Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic. The New York Times. Retrieved From http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/business/25multi.html?ex=1332475200&en=f2 Medina J. (n.d.) .The Brain Rules: Why the Brain Can’t Multitask. Neatorama. Retrieved fromhttp://www.neatorama.com/2008/03/20/the-brain-rules-why-the-brain-cant-multitask/ Melinda Smith, M.A, Robert Segal,(n.d.).ADD/ADHD in children.Helpguide.Org. Retrieved from http://helpguide.org/mental/adhd_add_signs_symptoms.htm Multitasking.(n.d.). Online Oxford Dictionary. Retrieved from http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0973021#m_en_gb0973021 Nass C. (28 August 2009). Multitasking May Not Mean Higher Productivity. National public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112334449 Nass, C. (2009).Everything distracts them. They are suckers for Irrelevancy. National Academy of Sciences.24th Edition. Retrieved from http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-study-082409.html Ophir, E. (2009).Media multitasker pay mental price, Stanford study show. Stanford University News. Retrieved fromhttp://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-study-082409.html Ophir, E. (2009). Study finds people who multitask often bad at it.Physorg.com. Retrieved from http://www.physorg.com/news170349575.html Ophir, E. M.S (2009).Chronic Media Multi Tasking Makes It Harder to Focus. Health Retrieved from http://news.healingwell.com/index.php?p=news1&id=630268 Rogers, R. Monsell, S. (1995). The cost of a predictable switch between simple cognitive tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 124,207-231 Rubinstein, J. Meyer, D, Evans, J. (2001) Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology, Human perception and performance, 27(4)763-797. Sinton, J. (n.d.). The Problems of Multitasking. Jonathon Sinton, Business Strategy director for Research International Timmer, J. (2006).You can multitask but don’t expect to learn anything. Ars Technica. Retrieved from http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2006/07/4807.ars Wagner, A. (2009). Media multitasker pay mental price, Stanford study show. Stanford University News. Retrieved from http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-study-082409.html Read More