The harm of multitasking is officially confirmed

    Many managers and programmers, especially among young people, sincerely believe that the simultaneous execution of several processes increases overall labor productivity. This is actually a fallacy. Studies by scientists from the Future Brain Institute at Oxford showed that our “central processor” is completely incapable of such a regime, even with Generation X.

    The problem of multitasking is especially acute among the younger generation. Modern children grow up in multitasking, so in their youth it is natural for them to watch TV while working, print text while talking on the phone, never ever remove the player from their ears, etc. It seems to them that labor productivity does not suffer at all, and all the talk on this topic is the nit-picking of older people whose brains are not capable of such.

    However, in fact, the human brain shows the most deplorable results when it is periodically distracted or forced to perform several tasks simultaneously. It doesn’t matter what tasks are involved: driving a car and talking on a cell phone, programming and reading mail or even just pressing a button during a conversation.

    Research by scientists from the Institute of the Brain of the Futureat Oxford, they were produced in two groups: youth from 18 to 21 years old and people from 35-39 years old. The subjects had to decipher the numbers in the pictures using a simple code. The results showed that young people on average 10% better at this task if they are not distracted. But if people are interrupted by SMS or IM-messages, then representatives of different generations demonstrate exactly the same results in speed and accuracy of recognition.

    All scientists who conducted these experiments, as one stated that after studying the results, they changed their own working habits. Here are their top tips.

    1. Check your mail as little as possible, and more often than once per hour. The study showed that a person needs an average of 15 minutes to return to working condition. The average office worker 28% of the time spent on the restoration of efficiency after being distracted.

    2. Do not rely on memory . Use special tools, such as tudu-lists, diaries for unloading tasks from your RAM there, and refer to these lists when you are ready to perform a new task.

    3. Do not do too much . Focus on the main tasks and “turn off” unnecessary ones.

    via New York Times

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