It’s a myth. It’s all a lie.
I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere in my teenage years I fell in love with the idea of multi-tasking. I found ways to do my homework in doses while simultaneously handling other pressing teenage tasks; like, playing games, shooting hoops, or the like. It got worse as I got to college, writing and working on multiple projects at one time (that’s when I realized my passions and my calling for media and entertainment). I was excited.
I thought I was focused, but recent research reveals that we forfeit focus when we opt to multi-task.
Multitasking Wasn’t For Us
The term ‘multitasking’ was coined by IBM in the 1960s and it was never intended to describe human capability. It was always meant for computers. Machines do have different processing capabilities. Somewhere down the line, we fell in love with the idea of being like these computers and started promoting ‘human-multitasking’ as some sort of badge of honor. Worn like a war medal. Not realizing that we’re promoting an ideal that slowly kills us.
According to Forbes, only about 2.5% of humans have the ‘rare ability’ to multitask. We think we’re like computers – running multiple programs and tabs at the same time. What we’re actually doing is a process called ‘task-switching’. We don’t run two programs at the same time. We pause one to start the other and vice versa. According to ABLE, this process is cognitively exhausting for us (computers win again). “The transition from one task to another involves significant cognitive effort, causing mental and physical fatigue, reduced task performance, and a loss of concentration — a phenomenon known as the switch cost effect,” writes William Arruda. It also increases stress levels, raises blood pressure, and is associated with depression, according to Lifespan Healthcare.
We think that multitasking helps us make significant progress in our endeavors. Some of us were trained to attempt the (practically) impossible. Our society was duped by a mirage of productivity; an idea that we can be multiple places at once when in actuality, it’s always best to maximize present time and space. Even if we make ‘progress’ with these multiple tasks, we’re paying a significant price to our physical and mental health. For small gains.
Answer the Call For Better
I’m no expert. But, maybe we should chart a course of renewed focus. One that puts one foot in front of the other and gives each step the attention it deserves. Imagine the progress we can make without the pressure of trying to manage multiple tasks. Without the stress. Who are we without that added stress? What can we create if we maximize our processing power?
A call for renewed focus is a call for us to be all that we were called to be as creatives.