Reference no: EM132201441

By now, we all know that multi-tasking can be a losing proposition. Talking on the phone while driving? Dumb idea. Texting while driving? Really dumb idea. But even seemingly harmless multi-tasking—like chatting with a friend while sending out an office e-mail—isn’t as harmless or efficient as we’d like to believe. A recent article published in the science journal NeuroImage revealed that when we attempt demanding tasks simultaneously, we end up doing neither as well as we should because our brains have cognitive limits. What’s more, we’re also less efficient after we’ve shut down e-mail and turned off our phones. In a recent experiment at Stanford University, a group of students was asked to spend 30 minutes simultaneously compiling a music playlist, chatting, and writing a short essay. A second group focused on each task individually for 10 minutes each. Afterward, they were given a memory test. The single-taskers did significantly better than their multi-tasking peers. “A tremendous amount of evidence shows that the brain does better when it’s performing tasks in sequence rather than all at once,” says Clifford Nass, Ph.D., a professor of communication at Stanford University. “We still don’t know the long-term effects of chronic multi-tasking, but there’s no question we’re bad at it, and it’s bad for us.” Many experts believe, however, that it’s possible to repair your power of concentration. Through solutions such as yoga and acupuncture, experts believe we can break our multi-tasking habit and sharpen our focus.