Workarounds That Work: How to Conquer Anything That Stands in Your Way at Work

17Multitasking Our Way to Oblivion

Increasing numbers of people seem to be increasingly proud of their ability to multitask even as growing research indicates that most multitaskers are actually less efficient and less accurate than their comparatively plodding tortoise cousins, the serial taskers. Before we dig into this juicy subject, though, let’s go over a little science.

THE SCIENCE OF MULTITASKING

If your computer is running right now, you may have an e-mail program checking for messages, a browser tab or two open, a Word document in progress, and a PowerPoint presentation waiting there to be fine-tuned. Sure, the computer is multitasking, but you aren’t! It may take only a mouse click or two to toggle between windows, but you still have ...