Multitasking or context switching?

"But they were, all of them, deceived."

Today's workplace and responsibilities of a job practically expect us to multitask. It’s so common to work on several tasks simultaneously, especially when considering the rise of agile methodologies that we all perceive ourselves as multitaskers.

But it seems we got it wrong.

Multitasking or context switching?

Being a multitasker means working on more than two tasks simultaneously. It is an entirely normal occurrence nowadays, and many people call themselves multitaskers, but is that correct? It seems that only 2,5% of the population can effortlessly multitask, and they are called supertaskers or multitask masters.

According to research, this is because supertaskers actually have different brains than the rest of the population. Supertaskers have the cognitive ability to work on multiple tasks simultaneously without making mistakes, pausing, or decreasing their performance. In other words, they tend to work better when multitasking. So if you have a high level of attention control, the ability to make decisions instantly, and you thrive under stress, then you might be a supertasker.

What about the ~97.5% of the population?

They mostly jump between tasks or switch between contexts, and they do it so fast that it seems like multitasking. It’s pretty popular to do it because everyone thinks this will save time. On the contrary, switching focus from one task to another, you tend to experience the Cognitive Switching Penalty. The brain spends extra time and energy loading and reloading contexts into working memory, significantly slowing down progress.

Cost of context switching

Other research shows that context switching can hurt cognitive abilities, productivity, time and performance. According to research at the University of Sussex, operating on multiple digital devices simultaneously can lead to a decrease in brain density. Furthermore, a research paper from 2007 showed that people approximately lose 10 minutes being distracted by new emails and notifications and 10 to 15 minutes being distracted by other types of tasks. In addition, researchers at the University of Oregon found that multitaskers often have focus and memory problems.

This does not mean that switching between tasks without losing productivity is impossible. There are ways to switch context and save time or increase performance. When considering the workload of an average employee, working on multiple tasks practically became a necessity, especially in the IT community. So how to make the workday easier? Try organising the workload into time blocks, timeboxes, and/or Pomodoro blocks. It is also beneficial to focus on one set of tasks at a time or schedule similar tasks on the same day. When switching between tasks, do it at the right time. Lastly, try eliminating distractions.

[caption id="attachment_740" align="alignnone" width="260"] Not sure if good at multitasking - bad at concentrating[/caption]

Reposted to Blog