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100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People
book

100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People

by Susan Weinschenk
May 2012
Beginner
272 pages
6h 8m
English
New Riders
Content preview from 100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People

26. People Can’t Actually Multitask

I know it’s popular to think that you are multitasking, but the research is clear: People can’t actually multitask. For many years, psychology research has shown that people can attend to only one task at a time. You can only think about one thing at a time. You can only conduct one mental activity at a time. So you can talk, or you can read. You can read, or you can type. You can listen, or you can read—one thing at a time. We are pretty good at switching back and forth quickly, so we think we are multitasking, but in reality we are not.

People Don’t Multitask—They Task-Switch

The term multitasking is a misnomer. People can’t actually do more than one task at a time. Instead, we switch tasks. So the term researchers ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780132964135Purchase book