IS MULTI-TASTING BAD FOR YOUR BRAIN?

Experts reveal the hidden perils of juggling too many jobs. Multitasking has rapidly taken over our lives, to the point where we look woefully lax if we’re doing just one thing at a time.

We think nothing of testing while also watching television, surfing the internet and talking to our family. Indeed, drug companies are busy developing products to enhance our mental efficiency so that we can do even more. 

The research was scanned on volunteers’ heads while they performed different tasks and found that when there is a group of visual stimulants in front of you, only one or two things tend to activate your brain, indicating we’re really only focusing on one or two items.

In other words, our brains have to skitter to and fro inefficiently between tasks. But the real problem occurs when we try to concentrate on the two tasks we are dealing with, because this then causes an overload of the brain’s processing capacity.

There is also the problem of brain drain. This is particularly true when we try to perform similar tasks at the same time - such as writing an email and talking on the phone - as they compete to use the same part of the brain. As a result, your brain simply slows down.

Even just thinking about multitasking can cause this log-jam, just being in a situation where you are able to text and this is similar to the head-fog caused by losing a night’s sleep.

This is why ‘People can’t do it very well, and when they say they can, they’re deluding themselves. ‘The brain is very good at deluding itself.’ Not only does multitasking affect our mental clarity, switching between tasks also makes us less efficient.

The study found that it took students far longer to solve complicated math problems when they had to switch to other tasks - in fact; they were up to 40 per cent slower. The same study also found multitasking has a negative physical effect, prompting the release of stress hormones and adrenaline.

This can trigger a vicious cycle, where we work hard at multitasking, take longer to get things done, and then feel stressed, harried and compelled to multitask more.

Other Studies by Gloria Mark show that when people are frequently diverted from one task to another, they work faster, but produce less. After 20 minutes of interrupted performance, people report significantly higher stress levels, frustration, workload, effort and pressure.

The evidence shows that women’s apparent multitasking superiority is down to the fact they are happier to try doing several things at once. Such changes can make us more disposed to being aggressive and impulsive, as well as raising our risk of cardiovascular disease.

In the longer term, it is the psychological and intellectual toll of multitasking which may cause the most widespread harm. And it’s the younger generations who are at greatest risk.

The more time young people spend multitasking, the harder they find concentrating on single intellectual tasks, such as reading a textbook, according to a report by American scientists in the journal Cyber psychology and Behavior.

Another cause is mental overload: attempting similar tasks, like email and talking on the phone, simply slows us down. So multitasking is actually bad for a child's intellectual development. 'As our minds fill with noise, the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and gradually to anything,' he argues.

Overturned: it is the theory that women's brains are better at multitasking than men did not stand up to research. This is because multitasking denies us essential pauses in our mental space.

We can restore them by techniques such as focusing on non-verbal cues when we are conversing with other people, being more aware of what we’re thinking and spending less time multitasking.