Hidden and Evident Costs of Multitasking

"Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself from two things you’d rather not be doing by doing them simultaneously".

People say, we need to multi task. Our friends say this, our boss says this, and everyone else says this. Are everyone right or they are also just misinformed? The facts are different and suggest the opposite. If we are trying to switch from one task to another we become more prone to distractions and you just cannot move them out of your work course. It causes certain mental which ultimately slows down the progress of the given task. The cost of this is that, you are not able to complete any of the task in time with accuracy and effort/monetary savings.

What are you doing at this moment of time? You are definitely reading this line, but is that the only thing you are doing? Chances are very high that you are doing other things as well, such as listening to your favourite music, chatting to your friends, checking emails, browsing through other websites simultaneously. This is the case in most of the people and they keep on doing multi dimensional things at once.

Some Facts and Figures

In the year 2007 there was a study conducted on the employees of Microsoft. It was found in the study that if some worker is working on a task and he/she is given access to their mailbox or messaging, they are bound to get distracted. If they responded to something, it took them 20 minutes to reply and get back to their original task with 100% focus. So if in an hour you have 3 emails which you have responded, you end up giving 0 % time to your task you were originally doing.

What People Believed?

Till the recent past I also thought, like many others that, multitasking is indeed an excellent way to get multiple things done together and faster. Looking at the above study and similar other research studies, it is being proven that if one person switches from one task another, it is bad for the productivity and accuracy. It is more troublesome to evade the distraction if someone is working on multiple things at once. It can also affect the cognitive ability of the person.

What is the real cost of Multi tasking?

It depends on the situation you are in. It depends on what tasks you are performing. There are multiple ways you can multi task – you switch back and forth multiple tasks, you perform many tasks simultaneously, you perform tasks in quick succession. Well, in any of these scenarios, a known scientist suggests that there could be a productivity loss of 40% due to mental blocks (present because of switching tasks bottleneck).

Remember the cost of chatting with friends and watching a game of football will not create any significant worries or cost effects. But if you are trying to juggle up the glove of your car while driving on an interstate might be very risky and costly affair.