Stop What You Are Doing and Eliminate Multitasking

 

Can we please stop multitasking? It's just draining attention from the task at hand and causing more problems than it is worth. If you don't believe me then read this interview about the neural bottleneck found in a study completed recently showing the adverse effects. Read it while you look over a recent deliverable from a team lead and try to understand why the quality is so bad. Workers cannot do two or more things at once, even if they are 20-something. (One interesting result: older people, having more flexible brains, can switch complex tasks more effectively than younger ones.)

Nowadays we look for "multitaskers" to fill positions. It's written right in the position announcement! What does that mean? Someone who can do two or more things simultaneously? Now that we have proof this is deleterious to quality - and probably schedules as well - we better take that off. If we mean someone who can, over a period of weeks, complete several complex tasks while handling a daily crisis or two, then we should describe the job that way and select for it. Otherwise, you will be on a conference call, ask someone a question and get "What? Can you say that again?", because the participant is also in an instant messaging conversation on the side and has not been listening. You'll get someone who can't finish anything properly because every response, report, decision, and e-mail is in progress, interupted by something else that is mistakenly given equal priority.