According to research that was carried out at Stanford University, multitasking might not be so … Wait, sorry, hold on a second, a bunch of people just favorited one of my tweets – awesome! … what was I saying … oh yeah, Stanford University. Multitasking. But wait, have you seen what’s going on with Ebola? Everyone’s just blowing this whole thing way out of proportion … Oh right right, multitasking. Well, according to Stanford University research, it turns out multitasking isn’t nearly as productive as our social media-soaked times would have you believe.
In an age when people are working, tweeting, pinning, poking, snapping and insta-this-and-thatting with dizzying simultaneity, one might think that the rise in doing many things at once represents some kind of evolution in human ability. It does not, at least according to some folks over at Stanford, whose research reveals that no matter how you spin it, multitasking is less conducive to success than doing one thing at a time. Sure, we may live in an age where doing a multiplicity of things at once has become the norm, but just because it’s normalized doesn’t make it better.
Once upon a time, there were only singular tasks
“The bedroom is on the ground floor and connects with the main room of the house,” George Plimpton wrote in The Paris Review in 1954. “The door between the two is kept ajar by a heavy volume listing and describing The World’s Aircraft Engines. The bedroom is large, sunny, the windows facing east and south letting in the day’s light on white walls and a yellow-tinged tile floor.”
In describing this room, Plimpton was setting the scene for an interview with one of the greatest literary luminaries of modern times. The room with the large east and south-facing windows belonged to none other than Ernest Hemingway, and it was here that the living legend would, every day, “stand in absolute concentration in front of his reading board.” People may be tempted to think of Hemingway as a mythical figure whose work arose from some towering plane of unfettered creativity, but in fact this wasn’t the case. Instead, it was work – hard work. Plimpton describes Hemingway literally sweating out new material during daily periods of self-imposed isolation, where, shut away from the world, he would hope for inspiration to strike.
Reading Plimpton’s interview today, the main thing that stands out is the singularity of focus that Hemingway was able to harness each day. In his small room, free from distractions and other tasks to complete, he was able to indulge a pure creative energy. The question is, could this kind of focus even be possible now?
More downsides to multitasking
It’s not just that multitasking makes people less productive. As a study conducted at the University of London pointed out, it can also have a negative impact on IQ as well.
“Participants who multitasked during cognitive tasks experienced IQ score declines that were similar to what they’d expect if they had smoked marijuana or stayed up all night,” Forbes stated. “IQ drops of 15 points for multitasking men lowered their scores to the average range of an 8-year-old child.”
As if that weren’t scary enough, a third study on multitasking, this one carried out at the University of Sussex, found that people who habitually do many things at once actually experience brain deterioration over time. If that’s not impetus enough to get you focused on only one thing at a time, we don’t know what is … oh wait, hold that thought, we just got an @ mention.
