Multitasking Decreases Productivity
Posted on August 1, 2008 Comments (1)
The problems with multitasking are becoming more and more well know, thankfully. Here is another article on the lower productivity multitasking produces – Multitasking Madness Decreases Productivity by Barbara Bartlein:
These findings are similar to those of David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan. “Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes,” said Meyer. “Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ability to process information.”
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“Many people delusionally believe they’re good at this,” he says. “The problem is that we only have one brain and it doesn’t work that way. In reality, nobody can effectively do more than one remotely complicated thing at a time.”
Related: The Siren Song of Multitasking – Multi-Tasking: Why Projects Take so Long – Flow (the opposite of multitasking)
Categories: Management, Process improvement, Psychology, Science
Tags: management research, Psychology, theory of knowledge
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May 24th, 2010 @ 9:14 am
[...] I wouldn’t base my judgement on this one study. But we don’t have to. Multitasking decreases productivity. The siren song of multitasking. Multi-tasking: why projects take so long. What we should strive [...]