So, hotshot, you think just because you follow 300+ people on Twitter, thanks to Tweetdeck, that you’re some sort of super-duper Information Age sage? Slow down, because a recent study, coming out of Stanford, says that multitaskers are no better at processing or retaining information than single-minded non-multitaskers. If you’re trying to process and retain information, then, best to stick to one task at a time.
The study, carried out by a group of researchers at Stanford, looked at 100 students, some who were multitaskers, some who weren’t. Researchers put the students through of series of simple tests to see how well they were able to concentrate and recall information. Things like, “Here’s some numbers and here’s some letters. Pick the letter. Now tell us if it’s a vowel or consonant.”
Looking at the resulting data, it turns out that the multitaskers, the people who claim to be able to follow hundreds of people on Twitter via Tweetdeck, performed horribly. Other tests, tests that attempted to measure students’ ability to recall information (distinct from their ability to process information, of course), also showed that multitaskers were rubbish.
Why is this happening? Says one of the researchers:
They couldn’t help thinking about the task they weren’t doing. The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can’t keep things separate in their minds.
What still isn’t clear is whether or not the constant multitasking is actually hindering people’s ability to process information, or if they’re born with an inability to process info.
And anecdotally, I agree 100 percent. I find that I have a horrid time, say, listening to music and reading. I can either focus on the words on the page (or screen) or the sounds coming out of the headphones. Otherwise, one detracts from my ability to understand the other.
Well, yeah of course non-multitaskers are better at processing information. If your just doing one thing, you’re probably giving it 100%, but if you’re multitasking, like doing 4 things at once you’re probably giving each thing 25% more or less.
I look at it like downloading. Sure, you could download one file at a time at maximum speed, or you could download multiple files at a time at split speeds. In the end, you get the files at the same time as you would otherwise.
Which is better? Neither. It depends on what your life/job/whatever demands of you. Do you need ot focus on multiple things at any given time but can’t? Then you should probably stop going down that route and pick one that’s better suited for you. etc etc
You’re actually going slower when you download too many at once. By downloading more at once you’re increasing overhead on your resources. If you download one or two things, your system only has to communicate between two paths to make sure everything gets there. But if you do several, it eats up more bandwidth to make sure everything gets to you.
I prefer switching back and forth on single/multi-tasks as priority necessitates.
Do you really think these studies are accurate? Because I ran my own *study, carried out by a group of multitaskers who looked at the research of these Stanford dudes and the results are that these folks are full of dung!
* My study was taken by researchers that were multitasking and yet produced accurate results.
We would have to agree with this study. It seems that it has truth behind its points. Start focusing on one thing at a time !!! Multitasking may be harmful, study says http://www.trigeia.com/article.php?id=102303
This study is complete cra -oops, brb
I would say two things :
- Following people on twitter as many as you follow is still one task : Reading people tweets, there is no multitask here.
- Given a vast amount of data, some being garbage, some being interesting, the multitasker has more chance of finding the interesting data and then put more time on that data(single tasking it).
I would believe that multitasker have better filtering abilities and in real life tasks, would achieve the same performance quicker because of the time not spent single-tasking data that is not relevant :D
Two cents by a wanabee multitaskers that still work in silence because music is too much information for me :D