Multitask Or Not To Multitask – This Is The Question

I've always had mixed feelings about multitasking. To me it means doing many things in a half-arsed way. It's a little bit like making love with one's spouse while giving him/her a good beating. And sadly many professional service practitioners live by this erroneous method in every aspect of their lives.

Just think of it. Have you noticed that you go out for lunch with a colleague, engage in an interesting discussion, and during your discussion your colleague keeps checking his PDA for email messages, his mobile phone for incoming calls and his pager for calls, while graciously ignoring you? I think that's plain retarded. I don't think anyone is so important that s/he can't have an hour of peace of mind without technological interruptions.

Many professionals believe that the ability to multitask is really just a matter of intelligence, and for smart people multitasking is really no problem. After all they have the brains for it.

So, what do we see?

Well, so-called type A people use multitasking in every single area of their lives. Interestingly type A people also have an increased chance of suffering heart attack and they also happen to be the most ineffective people in their work. Everything they do, they do it in second gear, with the handbrake halfway on and with only two cylinders firing. Their work often needs to be re-done... properly.

So, what is the logic in multitasking if nothing gets properly done? Also, I've recently read an interesting article in Time magazine about the really false impressions of multitasking.

Researchers Gloria Mark and Victor at the University of California at Irvine tracked 36 information-technology office workers and recorded how they spent their time, minute by minute. The researchers found that the employees devoted an average of just 11 minutes to a project before they got interrupted by an e-mail, a telephone call or a knock on their office doors. After the interruption, on average, it took them 25 minutes to return to the original task. In extreme case people weren't able to continue on the same day.

The workers in the study were juggling an average of 12 projects per person. One described it as "constant, multitasking craziness." The five biggest causes of interruption in descending order, according to Mark:

• a colleague stopping by the worker
• being called away from the desk
• the arrival of new e-mail
• the worker switching to another task on the computer
• a telephone call

So, I personally believe that even the thought of multitasking can have a serious negative impact both on your work and your life, including some of your best relationships.