Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
You know how some blog post titles overreach, over-promise, and smack of snake oil salesmanship? That would not be this post’s title. The real con is the lie that we are more efficient when we multitask or that we are productive when we spend hours in a day emailing, texting, tweeting, and other activities that require a series of quick, off-the-top-of-our-heads actions.
Here are a few facts about how the brain functions when we press ourselves to work faster, respond quicker, and stay “engaged” online or via email rather than do “deep” work.
Not only is the human brain incapable of multitasking, but it even becomes less efficient when we attempt to do more than one thing at a time.
Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at MIT and an expert on divided attention, says that our brains are “When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost…”
Daniel Levitin, a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience, describes our plight this way in his book The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload:
We’re not actually keeping a lot of balls in the air like an expert juggler; we’re more like a bad amateur plate spinner, frantically switching from one task to another, ignoring the one that is not right in front of us but worried it will come crashing down any minute.
According to Levitin, multitasking increases the production of a stress hormone and the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline. These hormones “overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking.”
Researcher Glenn Wilson found the cognitive losses from lack of concentrating on one task are greater than the cognitive losses from smoking marijuana or skipping a night’s sleep.
A Stanford neuroscientist discovered that learning new information while multitasking (such as emailing and watching TV) results in that information being placed in the wrong part of your brain. It lands in a part that is for procedures and skills. If properly placed in the hippocampus, where facts and ideas are stored, the information is filed in various ways and is therefore more easily retrieved.
Levitin adds:
“[The] rapid, continual shifting we do with multitasking causes the brain to burn through fuel so quickly that we feel exhausted and disoriented after even a short time. We’ve literally depleted the nutrients in our brain…[and that] can lead to aggressive and impulsive behaviour.”
Just what we need: to work hard but feel tired…and make poor decisions.
Our email inboxes create severe challenges for us in how we function in our workday. In almost every industry, workers are so flooded by emails that responding to them can take up the entire day. Note I used the word “respond.” Emails result in our responding to other people’s work much more than moving through our to-do list.
Levitin quotes an individual who sees his emails this way:
A large proportion of emails I receive are from people I barely know asking me to do something for them that is outside what would normally be considered the scope of my work or my relationship with them. Email somehow apparently makes it OK to ask for things they would never ask by phone, in person, or in snail mail.
The barrage of emails, which most users have no way to sort before opening each one, is exhausting in its variety but also in the uncertainty of what each will contain. As Levitin puts it:
This uncertainty wreaks havoc with our rapid perceptual categorisation system, causes stress, and leads to decision overload. Every email requires a decision! Do I respond to it? If so, now or later? How important is it? What will be the social, economic, or job-related consequences if I don’t answer, or if I don’t answer right now?
And then there’s the reality that we just can’t leave our emails alone. We’re constantly checking for new ones. And then we feel the need to answer them. When you are trying to concentrate but an unread email is sitting in your inbox, your effective IQ can be reduced by 10 points.
Here’s the addictive process our brains go through when we see an unread email (or a text, which demands even more immediacy):
- You realize you’ve received an email.
- This activates the brain’s novelty centers. (Something new! What’s in it? I have to know!)
- You read the email and respond and feel rewarded for having completed a task (even though that task was unknown to you a few minutes earlier).
- Each time you feel that sense of completion, you experience a shot of dopamine as your addicted limbic system cries out, “Do it again!”
Constantly shifting from one quick task to another can result in permanent changes to the brain.
A study from the University of Sussex (U.K.) ran MRI scans on the brains of individuals who spent time on multiple devices at once (texting while watching TV, for example). The MRI scans showed that subjects who multitasked more often had less brain density in the anterior cingulate cortex. That’s the area responsible for empathy and emotional control.
Now, the author of the article I read, Larry Kim, does point out that researchers don’t know which is the cause and which is the effect. Do individuals who have this brain density experience a propensity to multitask? Or does multitasking cause the brain density? It’s too soon to know.
These findings of the affect of flitting quickly from task to task, whether it be emails, texts, TV, or talking on the phone, are sobering. And give me renewed vigor in my attempt to purposely set aside serious clumps of my day for concentrated jobs like reading a manuscript, working on a contract, or preparing a proposal for submission. I owe it to my brain!
How do you organize your day to keep your mind on the deeper work you need to do?
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Interesting post, and very deep work, Janet!
* I’m not sure I agree with the researchers’ conclusions, though. The physiology of the brain is much more mystery than fact; we have theories, for example, on how memories are stored…but the actual mechanism is explained by a model, and the model is not ‘fact’. (As an example, consider Newtonian physics…it is fine for explaining the seen and experienced world at the gross level, but take it down to the very small, very big, or very fast, and it breaks down completely, and that’s where Einstein stepped in…with a better model.)
* I’m a bit hesitant to accept that one’s effective IQ can drop by ten points when aware of an unread email, simply because that’s something that is virtually impossible to quantify; my IQ has been independently measured at values between 130 and 200, and with that sort of baseline spread, a ten-point change would be statistically meaningless. Too, experiments with human subjects have huge baseline variables in personality and ‘types’ of cognition. Some people do well with stress; others, in the same situation, panic, and it isn’t always predictable. (And it isn’t constant, because courage can be like money in the bank…and you can use it up.)
* I’m saying this as someone who, when he could, always multitasked, and consciously tried to be in a setting in which it was required, because it was there that I did my best work. (But how do I know it was my best? There’s no ‘alternate me’…thank God…doing the same thing in a concentrated manner…hmmm.)
* And finally, I think the most telling omission is implicit in the assumption that the brain is something of a chemically-driven difference engine, with no input from the Almighty. Are our memories chemically stored, or are they held in trust by God…and made available as needed (and cloaked when they’d be harmful)? When we multitask, are we doing it alone? Consider having to calculate point of aim and point of impact for one’s rifle when under fire, and having to make a parallel tactical decision on an egress route from a contested piece of real estate…do we tap into God’s parallel processing capabilities, and are our minds also a conduit of His wisdom?
Nice to see you back with a longer comment, Andrew. Hope that means you’re feeling a bit better.
I agree, Andrew. Yes, we know more about the brain than we used to, but there is so much more that we still don’t know. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. And we have the mind of Christ. Which is beyond what I can ask or think. To God be the glory!
Having spent time with you and B, and having read much of what you’ve had to say over the last few years, having had long conversations with you about all kinds of stuff?
All I can about the 130 to 200 IQ point thing?
200 is low, buddy.
And I’m fairly certain if *I* was measured/tested/observed? I’d get a ribbon for participating.
(no, I don’t actually think that, it was silliness, calm your literal self)
Thanks for your perspective, Andrew. The brain is a complex “organism.” And we have much to learn about it. What interests me is that ALL of the studies point to multitasking–for us mere mortals–as a bad idea on several levels. There always will be exceptions, and it doesn’t surprise me that you’re exceptional, Andrew.
I doubt email is routinely damaging my efficiency or my brain (as long as it’s not something from a political candidate).
*I may be a techie, but I don’t let my technology enslave me. There are some things I do to avoid it with email.
*I avoid distraction by not letting notifications appear automatically on the computer I use for writing. I’ve always found it easy to ignore incoming emails, anyway, if I’m working on something. I write on a 10” laptop, and more often than not, I don’t open my yahoo email on it while I work. I also don’t open my Gmail on it unless for a specific reason. I keep the sound muted except when deliberately listening to something, so there are no audible distractions even when the emails are activated in a background window.
*I periodically check my smartphone for emails. Yahoo vibrates but does not ping and Gmail displays passively on the dormant screen. I can quickly check what has come in without opening every email, and I purge extraneous items without ever opening. Only if I need to do something with an email do I open on the laptop.
*Maybe the same system will work for those tempted to look at every email as it arrives.
Carol, it sounds as if you have a good system that enables you to concentrate on deeper work. I’m trying to discipline myself not to clean out my inbox when I come to work, which has been my practice in the past. That enslaved me to email.
Now I skim through who the emails are from and respond only to those that are from clients or editors. Later in the day, I come back to email and see what new ones have shown up and look at the lower priority communications. The system seems simple, but it’s working.
But because the majority of my communications come at me through emails, it’s easy to want to check more frequently. Especially when I’m battling to enter into deeper work. Okay, now we’re talking about procrastination, and email is very good for that.
Did you say something, Janet? I’m sorry, I was just checking my email.
* Seriously, I used to think that the phone was my biggest interrupter. And since helping others with problem is central to my position, I often say that it is my job to be interrupted. It is the urgency of texting that makes me crazy. I like to email or text a question, thinking that the person at the other end can answer when it is convenient for them. But it seems that most people think a text must be dealt with instantly.
* For what it is worth, as I get older, I find it harder to multi-task. Just as my joints move more slowly, so does my brain. I could keep more plates spinning back when I was 30. Older and wiser, I have happily concluded that some of those plates don’t need to spin and some other plates aren’t mine to spin.
Shirlee, you’re so right that texting feels more urgent. As if I need to read the text right away and respond right away. When I don’t, I have to tap a lot of extra letters to explain why I didn’t respond immediately. Our communication methods simply are becoming more and more “urgent.” Which means our plates are spinning faster.
Thank you for this timely reminder, Janet! I’ve made it a practice to check my email/Facebook hourly, but lately have zipped back and forth between writing and communication like a distracted toddler. I agree, Shirlee–as we age, we’ll work more efficiently if we discern priorities and focus.
It’s so tempting to want to stay in touch with everyone. Not to mention that it’s hard to discipline myself to do the deeper work. It’s so much easier to find someone to connect with via social media or email.
I just muted the television! I only check my email about once a day. I don’t really get much email anymore. Friends usually write me on Facebook these days. Facebook seems to have taken over email in my life. My editor still contacts me through email, but that’s not often. And I don’t have my computer or my phone alerting me to new messages, whether that be email or FB, etc. I check it … it doesn’t check me. When I’m in the process of writing a novel, I try to write in the morning while it’s quiet … and I keep my focus on that. When I come to a stopping point is when I’ll check other things.
You have excellent self discipline, Shelli.
It must be my influence, as I am so calm and focused.
Ha ha! My mom has always said that. And you actually are calm and focused! 🙂 Very!
I knew you were a kindred spirit If I had you’re direct email address, you’d get more. How’s that for a threat?
Carol, Facebook me anytime for my email address! 🙂
Fascinating article, Janet. I used to pride myself on my ability to multi-task. As I’m growing older, it’s harder to do, and I’m finding I get distracted more easily. And, being in a place of recuperation and slow movement, it’s next to impossible to multi-task. That’s probably a good thing. 🙂
*I confess I have an addiction to checking my email. I need to get back in the habit of shutting it down when I’m working on other things. The research you’ve shared has convinced me I need to get a better handle on emails and texts, and not let them continue to handle me.
Jeanne, I’m finding, even knowing what bad habits I have fallen into with emails and social media, that knowledge alone isn’t enough. Keeping my mind focused on deeper tasks is tough work. I’d so much rather be playing with friends and colleagues…
I like playing too. 😉 I’ll pray for you this week as you re-establish those good habits. 🙂
Thanks, Jeanne.
I can multitask laundry/cleaning/organizing, but those are tactile events not requiring much mental activity.
When I’m writing, I need TOTAL silence, no distractions and the “you’d better be bleeding or unconscious if you come and ask me something” kind of behaviour.
Since my husband writes scientific papers, he mostly knows when to leave me to my work, because he knows what it’s like to get interrupted when he’s “in the zone”.
Sometimes, okay, ALL the time , when I’m writing, even in the silence, I need to breathe, that’s when I zip over to Facebook or check my email.
One day last winter, (My husband and I share the dining room as an office) I sat down to work, and didn’t speak to him until noon.
He had a look of shock on his face. Then he said something about that being the longest he’d ever NOT heard me speak.
My husband tells people I look incredibly lifelike when I’m at the keyboard. We sit on the same sofa with him watching a movie and me like I’m out of body and living in my characters’ world.
Jennifer, I’ve noted that some tasks really aren’t very demanding of my brain–like folding laundry. Unfortunately, sometimes I think things like driving aren’t very demanding. Um, maybe I’m wrong about that.
I c what u mean, Janet. What I do–oh, MSFT is down–try 2 compartmentalize–oops, two e-mails just came in.
Nice with you, too, David…
I agree that texting is the greater trap for most. There’s a bumper sticker I see often. “Guns don’t kill people. Texting while driving kills people.” Even if they aren’t actually “driving,” you see the texters at every red light. It seems like it must be addictive…sort of like dark chocolate M&Ms.
*I used to watch my kids try to do homework while texts came in, and I’d tell them to set it aside and finish the work faster. What happened when I watched was probably not what happened when I didn’t.. Now they are older, both can ignore a text for a while, just like me. I know from having to wait for a response that my daughter doesn’t even answer a text or phone call when she driving. My son, I’m not so sure.
*One possible solution to keep from texting while writing is to put the phone in the adjacent room. You’ll hear the ring from a call but won’t be tempted to keep checking each text as it arrives. If you still must see each text as it comes, you can shed any guilt over your failure to resist the temptation by calling it an exercise program when you walk over to read it. Aren’t you supposed to get up from the computer every 30 seconds…er..minutes?
Carol, yes, texting has the greatest immediacy for us. When that ping comes in, we mindlessly check it. But, yes, we should get up from our computers regularly. Now, the question is, how do we define that? 🙂
Janet, what an interesting post. I’m guilty of having email notifications on at work so I see when a new email comes in. Unfortunately, there’s a bit of a culture around my office in which co-workers send and email then shortly after physically stop by to see if I got said email. (Sigh.) So, there’s a bit of a proven necessity for me to see what comes in in real time. I’ve learned to close my office door if I’m working on something I need to finish to avoid interruptions (and will close email program).
In other aspects of life, I am NOT a multi-tasker. In fact, I’m often in neck deep to one task with blinders on. So much so, that I miss other things happening around me. A task gets 100% of my attention in a world where that’s not always feasible. I’ve been known to forget other things while on my one task. I wish I was better at juggling.
When it comes to writing, I need an empty house or to get away to a location where I can focus. Doesn’t have to be quiet, but other devices are turned off, coffee is poured, and I settle in for the day. One-track-minded pony, right here. 🙂
Ugh about the “send the email and run to the recipients desk to see if it came” thing!!!
That’s like kicking someone in the shin and then asking if they felt it.
You got that right, lady. I’m thinking of setting an automatic response to emails that reads, “I check emails once an hour. I will contact YOU when I’m ready to discuss topic of said email. Unless the email will self-destruct and I need warning, please do not venture to my office to tell me the email is in my inbox. Thanks, kindly.” 🙂
I find it helpful to keep the sound notification “off” on all my devices except for incoming texts, phone calls and messenger. I don’t need to know if there’s a new post on FB and silent Gmail displays are easily ignored or answered if necessary.
*I’m not sure where brain density comes into play, but I’ve always been better at multitasking in a physical sense, rather than mental. Laundry, cleaning, fixing meals and the immediate needs of my kids were tasks that continually overlapped when all four lived at home. Of course the physical actions sometimes required a taxing amount of brain power. On those days I’d often find myself digging through the trash for things I’d accidentally pitched while in the throes of a multitasking cleaning frenzy: car keys, mail and an occasional wad of cash. Ah, the good ol’ daze.
Lara, a wad of cash? Oh, dear…I’ve ‘misplaced’ cash under different circumstances, but I can sure identify.
* Off topic, but thanks again for allowing me to use something you said here a couple of weeks ago. If you’d care to see it, here’s the link –
http://blessed-are-the-pure-of-heart.blogspot.com/2016/02/your-dying-spouse-124-evangelizing.html
Haha, Andrew. In my haste to pick up clutter I often had many items in my hand that had proper homes, but accidentally went into the trash.
*And thank you for the link!
Not good news. I may be distracted today.
I am sitting here with my laptop open to work (but I keep hitting refresh on another tab to see if I won a flash fiction), my iPad sitting next to laptop with open emails to my tax CPA who is instructing me how to submit ID theft paperwork to IRS, my washing machine smelling like smoke and from the other direction the wafting smellof a dead mouse that I can’t locate although I have spent most of them morning with flashlight, sniffing around my basement.
And my phone is next to the iPad, texting my son about whether his tax filing triggered the alert – maybe I am not being hacked after all.
I need another cup of coffee – on a beach somewhere…..
But about multi-tasking… I cannot have ANY other sound in the room when I write. Stephen King talks about blasting metal music. I need silence!
Sheila, there are going to be days like this. We just all hope it won’t be everyday–and that requires our taking charge of our hours and how they’re being spent.
I remember life without email. My son does not and has often said he wants to go off-grid sometimes. Just check out so no one can reach him. Hmm. There’s a thought. Leave your phone on the dresser. Stop wearing it and responding every time it pings.
On the opposite side of the coin, everything I do work-wise is connected to email. I send manuscripts via email, articles and columns for the newspaper via email, graded papers to my college students via email. And when a recipient doesn’t let me know they have received my work, I wonder. Just a simple “Got it” works, and is a practice my editor at the paper comforts me with.
I appreciate all the research on this topic Janet. Societal issues loom. But as some have already mentioned, I, too, ignore email when I’m writing. I check my inbox in the morning for important notices, but many (most) emails can wait for later because I don’t do that flip-switch-multi-tasking thing well. Now I know why!
Last summer, okay, most of last year, life for Hubs at work got REALLY stressful. So stressful, he almost cancelled the 8 day fishing trip with our oldest son. I went thermal and made him go.
The best part? Where Son lives, there’s zero cell coverage for literally hundreds and thousands of square miles.
When I could talk to Hubs, by landline, he declared it to be the BEST WEEK EVARRR!!
The trip will be for 3 weeks this summer. 🙂
Off-grid is the best way to find oneself again. Family, fishing, goofing around, all of it re-built my husband.
Davalynn, like you, much of my work comes and goes via email. So just turning it off means I’m shutting off the work valve. That might have value on certain days when I need to really focus all day, but for the most part, the result would be a collection of a word of emails to respond to. So it’s a dilemma to find balance, and like most balancing acts for me, I frequently fall off the wire.
Wow! I feel this when I look at Facebook too. Like a dog who spies a squirrel, then a rabbit, then a treat, I’m constantly shifting my focus. You’ve put into words what I’ve felt in my head.
I feel a bit convicted right now.
Thanks.
Bill, that’s well put. I used to work my way through all of my emails and then head over to Facebook, where I was bombarded with an unending string of emotional tugs. By the time I pried myself away from Facebook, I’d be exhausted. Now I know why.
Wow, this is convicting. There is more than enough mayhem in my brain to begin with. Don’t need to be adding to it.
I feel the same way, Jennie. What I need is more CALM in my brain and in my day.
I’m writing this while in Colorado with my four grand kids five and under in age, I thought of my daughter who is constantly multitasking because of the children…we have a hard time sticking to a conversation, no surprises here. So I shared parts of the blog with her, and we both laughed. Constant interruptions … Yep. Lots of validation in these studies for something we sort of know on a gut level of awareness. I find that I can waste way too much time trying to do way too much “platform building” on way too many media fronts (and not fully satisfied with any of them)…you get the picture. I am in the process of streamlining my efforts.
There is lots of truth packed in this blog. It’s a good reminder and has some excellent information.
Norma, I actually thought about mothers of young children as I wrote the blog. These moms not only have to engage in multitasking all day, but at night the little ones have needs as well. No wonder mothers feel as though they’re brain is going to explode. Overload!
I have no such excuses; I’ve simply formed bad work habits and have let other people’s priorities become mine.
As much work as emails…and blog comments…can be a duty with which to deal, I have learned, and am daily learning, that they are in fact the Deeper Work. They are Connection.
* Today there is a dying me, dealing alone with a beloved and dying dog, Rapunzel. It takes all of my effort to be with her; this effort eats into the energy I have left for writing, and it shreds my heart of faith and hope. But it’s the right thing to do.
* You never know at the foot of whose cross you sit.
Andrew, I’m so sorry that Rapunzel is coming to her end. Anyone who has ever loved a pet knows how hard this is,but when when you have your own challenges, it’s beyond the grasp of the rest of us the level of the emotional pain.
Janet, thank you…it’s the hardest task yet placed before me, made immanent by our shared fate. It’s a command decision to let her die here, surrounded by her canine and human family, and a part of me would take her away to the vet to be put down. But it would be cruel to her and to those who’ve loved her all these long years.
* And yes, I see in her passing my own road, and it scares me. There is no Gospel of Grace here…only the Gospel of the Passion, and to that I try to hold.
Andrew, I’m so sorry to hear about Rapunzel. I’m praying for you, and for her.
Thank you, Jeanne. It’s a horrible, horrible day, and it’s breaking my heart.
So sorry about your dog, Andrew. Went through that myself not long ago. God does give grace even for this.
Thanks, Linda. When she and I were young, I would pick her up under the forelegs, and swing her round and round, while she did a canine giggle. I would trade everything I wrote for one more chance to play.
Tears and prayers for you, Andrew. I’ve held many of our pets in my arms until the very end. Its tough.
Just what most of us knew all along, but were afraid to say to those “in charge.”
I so identify with this! I need to turn off email and FB to write deeply. Otherwise, I’m skimming. But I also have a different email problem: unread emails, mostly “offers” (from good places, like Writer’s Digest) piling up in the inbox. I tend to skim through, answer the emails I need to, and then …. ack! The clutter builds. Help! I’m drowning ….
Linda,it’s a whole different kind of discipline to clean out one’s email box. I know all about those best of intentions to get back to that email you’re not ready to respond to at the moment.
Linda, I set up a new gmail address and all those “offers” to that address. Then I can pick and choose when I read/respond (some weeks, the offers have expired before I read the emails. That makes dealing with them so much quicker!).
I also use Boomerang to get rid of anything I don’t have to deal with today/this week. It’s helping.
Thanks for the tips, Iola.
Thank you, Janet. Very important and challenging information. Makes me take stock of how I organize my work. Yikes!
What a relief to learn that scientists now verify what I have long thought. That computers burn your brain. Between the electronic makeup of the tools, and the grasshopper jumping from one “look at this!” to another, we poor humans don’t stand a chance.
Read again last week of the importance of setting yourself aside in silence and solitude to just think. Sounds wonderful. As per your husband’s experience in the boondocks of the fishing camp, Jennifer, yes, I firmly believe people should shut off those cell phones and computers every night when they get home and just live. Normally.
Yes, imagine a time of silence, which means no pings from computers or smart phones. It makes me breathe easier just thinking about it.
Seriously helpful information, Janet. I’ve tried a few things to reduce my mental fog. This seems a very likely cause and one I’d not considered. Thank you so very much. I have hope again.
Let there be light–and brilliant thinking.