Multitasking Is A Total Waste Of Time

“Watching a soap on TV while surfing on Facebook and checking your emails and listening to a song,” may sound like you get a lot done and you are the ultimate multi-tasker but nothing is further from the truth, according to the researcher.

People who believe they are the best multi-taskers are actually the worst and the least productive, a new study shows. Photo Credit: BRUNO

“The study shows that the more you multi-task the worse you are at it.”

310 psychology students were asked to complete a survey about their multi-tasking. Then they were asked to talk on the phone while drive a car.

The result: Those student who thought they were best at multi-tasking actually were the worst and got the least done.

“People who often multi-task believe they are better at it than others and that is not the case. On the contrary. They often score worse than others,” professor David Strayer says.

The study proved that 70 percent of those who participated in the study were convinced they were good multi-taskers. The result showed strongly they were not.

The study found that those individuals are for the most part sensation seekers or impulsive by nature.

People who multi-task most often are found to have difficult focusing on one specific task, the study concluded. They are easily distracted and require constant ‘staying busy’.

Multi-taskers get satisfaction from the various things they are doing all at once but their productivity is rock bottom. What’s more, multi-taskers thinks they are productive because they do so many things at once but in reality they confuse productivity with satisfaction.

Multi-taskers continue to multi-task because they feel good when they send an email while watching TV at the same time.

Scientists Alan Keen said that multi-tasking makes people more aggressive.

“It explains why people in larger cities are angrier than elsewhere. The chaos of the city, the hectic job, navigating traffic are multi-tasks that change the chemistry in our brains,” according to Keen.

“These changes ensure our bodies are filled with a constant supply of chronic stress hormones which makes us more aggressive and much more impulsive,” Keen concluded.