Multitasking Essay

The popular belief that multitasking is efficient, and the new-age generation is hard wired for multitasking, is highly misguided. Truth is, effective multitasking is an oxymoron. It’s not uncommon to see a person texting while walking down the street, listening to music while doing homework, or staring at a computer screen with multiple tabs and windows open. It’s hard not to multitask, given the amount of work people have to do and the non-stop information being thrown at them. People will do it as a force of habit; they think it will help them accomplish more tasks in a shorter time period. More often than not, they find it being the complete opposite. The brain can only process one activity at a time; instead, it switches gears, which takes time, reduces accuracy, distracts, and hinders creative thoughts. So, the real question should be: is multitasking actually worth the time? No, multitasking negatively affects people in all aspects of their life.

What really is multitasking? There is a substantial amount of information on how the brain multitasks. And basically, it doesn’t. A person may see a teenage girl writing a text message, drinking coffee, and doing homework all at the same time, and think the girl is multitasking. People do not understand the true concept of what multitasking is. They are under the illusion they can do things simultaneously while they work, and think they are paying attention to everything around them, when they aren’t. What’s really going on is people’s brains are, they switching back and forth from task to task rather than doing it all at once. The brain is doing more than one task, but by ordering them and deciding which one to do at any one time. People will question of how others easily walk dow...

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...ll affect the way people learn.

Multitasking is a poor long-term strategy for learning. People can’t filter out irrelevancy because multitasking has become a habit. A majority of people have the misconception multitasking will help them accomplish tasks in a faster manner, yet it does the complete opposite. Multitasking is not doing a plethora of tasks all at once, but rather switching from one task to another in a continuous cycle. Each time the brain switches task, there is lag time between that adds up. Multitasking distracts people from doing the task before them, so learning and memory becomes spotted and limited, and it doesn’t help that there is technology constantly at people’s fingertips. Multitasking is a poor strategy to to use why trying to complete a job. Multitasking has negative benefits in all aspects of life and is a habit that needs to be broken.