The Multitasking Monster

Oh multitasking. An efficient way to get multiple things done at once, right? Well... some experts may disagree. In this article from shakeoffstress, we'll explore how multitasking could be preventing you from being truly productive and contributing to your stress.

First of all, what is multitasking? Multitasking is an attempt to complete multiple tasks at once. This could be taking notes while watching TV and FaceTiming your friend. Or, it could be something as simple as listening to music while you're getting ready. Let's see what the experts say about this common habit amongst teenagers.

The first article we found about multitasking was published on the NCBI database by Mark Wetherell and Kirsty Carter. These experts attempted to recreate real-life stress in a laboratory setting by developing the 'multitasking framework.' This framework requires people to pay attention to and work on several different things at once, with varying levels of difficulty.

The researchers found that when their twenty healthy participants faced the multitasking framework for a mere fifteen minutes, their heart rate and blood pressure increased. The severity of these effects only increased as the researchers increased the difficulty of the framework. Who knew that multitasking could be affecting your health and not just your mental wellbeing?

Our second article is a long one from Kevin P. Madore and Anthony D. Wagner. They analyzed a couple of different studies regarding the effects of multitasking. The first one we'll look at is about the relationship between accuracy and multitasking. They found that switching between tasks always has a "task switch cost."

This means that going from doing one thing to another is associated with a reduction in speed or accuracy that can be either large or small. This task switch cost shows up almost any time you're multitasking. Now that I'm thinking about it, it does tend to take me a little longer to get ready when I'm trying to watch the newest episode of my favorite show.

Madore and Wagner's findings were reinforced by another one of their studies where they used fMRI technology to see the activity of the brain. They asked their subjects to categorize different things by either color, shape, or pattern.

Participants took longer on average to to categorize the objects in "switch trials," where they were asked to categorize each object by a different feature. For example, they would first be asked to categorize a pink ball by its color. After that, they would be asked to categorize a shirt by its pattern. This was meant to simulate multitasking.

In "stay trials," where participants were asked to categorize all of their objects by the same feature, participants were often quicker and more efficient. The fMRI also showed that "stay trials" were less demanding neurologically than "switch trials."

The next study in this article is interesting, because it's a form of multitasking that you're probably very familiar with. Media multitasking. This involves interacting with more than one form of media at a time, like checking your email while listening to music. Let's see if this form of modern multitasking is as detrimental as regular ole' fashioned multitasking.

First of all, let's get some statistics. Madore and Wagner collected data from the younger American population and found that the average amount of time spent with media per day is 7.5 hours. Of that 7.5 hours, 29% is devoted to more than one form of media. That comes to about 2.25 hours of media multitasking a day. Yikes!

However, we have to remember that this 29% statistic was formed by averaging the responses of all young Americans surveyed. The researchers addressed this generalization by categorizing people individually by their Media Multitasking Inventory score. A high MMI score indicates an individual who media multitasks often, and a low MMI score indicates an individual who rarely media multitasks.

The researchers hypothesized that people in the high MMI group would be better at multitasking, because they engage in it more often. Although in some cases they were better at multitasking than the low MMI group, there were also cases where they showed higher task switch costs. Remember those pesky things? Basically, being more experienced at media multitasking doesn't necessarily mean that you're better at it.

Adding onto this, people in the high MMI group also performed worse than people in the low MMI group on independent tasks. These tasks were designed by researchers to involve skills and facets such as impulse control, long-term memory, and long-term attention. Participant performance on these independent tasks was assessed with regard to accuracy, time, and other benchmarks. Whether multitasking or completing a single task, high MMI participants almost always performed poorer than low MMI participants.

Our last article is from TIME, written by Cynthia Kubu and Andre Machado. They investigated the effects of attempts at multitasking on mental ability. Their opening paragraph pushed one fact to readers: only about 2.5% of the population can multitask effectively. After reading all these articles, we're hoping we're part of the 2.5%!

Kubu and Machado wrote that multitasking can affect three important skills: attentiveness, learning, and mindfulness. Let's start with attentiveness. With frequent multitasking, the area of the brain responsible for attention is often less active, making attention and focus more difficult. A frequent multitasker may find it difficult to do one task, as they've essentially trained their brain to complete multiple tasks at once.

This attention deficit can also affect learning. As multitaskers are used to facing a lot of different information at once, it can be difficult to focus solely on one concept for the amount of time it takes to get a thorough understanding of it. Finally, multitasking can make mindfulness difficult, as multitaskers may fall victim to attempting to pay attention to everything going on around them. This can make being present in the moment difficult.

We here at shakeoffstress have a difficult time doing anything without music in the background, but maybe we'll try to break that habit after reading all of these articles. Mark Wetherell and Kirsty Carter say that multitasking can affect our health, raising our blood pressure and heart rate.

On the other hand, Kevin Madore and Anthony Wagner found that focusing on one task often led to more efficiency and quicker completion of said task, with the elimination of task sketch costs. However, frequent media multitaskers performed worse than less frequent media multitaskers on both multitasking and completing single tasks. Our last article from TIME focused on how multitasking could affect attentiveness, learning, and mindfulness.

We here at shakeoffstress hope this article was informative and gave you some information about how sticking to doing one task at a time can help you to shake off stress. Thanks for reading :-)

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