Multitasking human brain is strongly overvalued

Many of us believe that they can perform multiple tasks at the same time - read the article on the site, munch a sandwich, answering emails and talking on the phone, while managing to still view the messages on Twitter. It is believed that simultaneous multiple things at once does not reduce the effectiveness of, but on the contrary, it increases.

University of Utah Research shows that people who are accustomed to act in this way are usually impulsive, restless and confident in their ability to juggle several things at once. In fact, the more tasks you perform, the less attention is given to each of them.

The researchers interviewed 310 students. Each of them was asked to assess their multi-tasking on a scale of 1 to 100 with an average rating of 50, described in detail in the questionnaire about the time spent on phone calls while driving in the car and on the interaction with various types of media - from magazines and video games to the exchange SMS and e-mail. Students also completed a special test to determine their level of multitasking, in which it was necessary to remember a sequence of letters. The letters were not given a row and separated by a simple mathematical problems, true or false, such as 2 + 3 = 6.

70% of participants rated themselves above average. In fact, the results of the test, most of the subjects were rated below 30%.

So often what we mistake for multi-tasking, in fact it is the inability to focus on one task at a time and makes us distracted. The results show that the people doing more things at the same time, the lower the efficiency in each of them.

By the way, 25% of participants who showed the best results in most cases rated themselves below average, indicating that they prefer to finish first one thing and then move to the next.

via factroom.ru