University of Utah professor David Strayer confirmed that talking on the phone while driving a car (one of the most common forms of multitasking) is as dangerous as driving while intoxicated.A group of business psychologists from Harvard, UNC, and HEC Paris found that spending time reflecting on a task leads to better performance and recall on subsequent tasks.An Ohio State University study found that media multitasking-e.g., reading a book while watching TV-results in poor cognitive performance on both tasks we keep doing both anyways because we get an emotional boost when we do.With the 4.4-second interruption, the error rate quadrupled.Įxperiments like these confirm the mountain of scientific research that points to multitasking as being bad news for productivity, accuracy, and efficiency. With a 2.8-second interruption, the students made double the errors when they returned to the test. In another, the interruption was 2.8 seconds. In one case, the interruption lasted a little more than four seconds. The interruptions came in the form of pop-ups that required the students to enter a code. Researchers tested 300 Michigan State students on their ability to persevere through interruptions while taking a computer test. A 3-second distraction leads to double the mistakes Fortunately, there are some fun new ways to experiment with the idea of single-tasking-both in your browser and beyond. Working on multiple items at once is a recipe for inefficiency. The same goes for anything else that might distract you from your main objective. The more tabs you have open, the more multitasking work you’re doing, and the less likely you are to be as productive as possible. You might say browser tabs are the new litmus test for multitasking. Pretty soon, it’s likely we’ve forgotten what we were online for in the first place. We all love to have multiple tabs open at once, adding more and more as we find new articles to click and sites to visit. It seems like my multi-tab madness is right in line with the status quo.
I’d like to say they were all for research, although I’m pretty sure one or two slipped down a YouTube wormhole. While writing this post, I had 18 tabs open. How many browser tabs do you have open right now?
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