Bulldozer00's Blog

“There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” – Lord Chesterfield (1740)

Study after study after study have shown that, due to the natural imperfections built into human memory, multitasking is inefficient and unproductive compared to single-tasking. The bottom line is that humans suck at multitasking. Unlike computers, when humans switch from doing one thought-intensive task to another, the clearing out of memory content from the current task and the restoration of memory content from the previous task greatly increases the chances of errors and mistakes being made.

So why do managers multitask all the time, and why do unenlightened companies put “multitasking prowess” on their performance review forms? Ironically, they do it to reinforce an illusion that multitasking is a key contributor of great productivity and accomplishment. When a “performance reviewer” sees the impressive list of superficial accomplishments that a multitasker has achieved and compares it to a measly list of one or two deep accomplishments from a single-tasker, an illusion of great productivity is cemented in the mind of the ignorant reviewer. Most managers, huge multitaskers themselves, and clueless to the detrimental effects of the malady on performance, tend to reward fellow multitaskers more than non-multitasking “slackers“. Bummer for all involved; especially the org as a whole.