January 19, 2015

# The Cognitive Costs of Multitasking

Daniel J. Levitin writing for The Guardian on multitasking:

> Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at MIT and one of the world experts on divided attention, says that our brains are “not wired to multitask well… 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 in doing so.” So 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.

I’ve always considered myself terrible at multitasking, which is sounding more and more like a positive quality rather than a negative one.

Levitin goes on to write about the physiologic effects of multitasking:

> Asking the brain to shift attention from one activity to another causes the prefrontal cortex and striatum to burn up oxygenated glucose, the same fuel they need to stay on task. And the kind of 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.

I have definitely noticed “multitasking exhaustion” when I do try to multitask. I feel like 4pm Friday afternoon after a long week.

Unfortunately, I think trying to not multitask also has a negative cognitive effect. self-control is a limited resource .

This is why it’s important to remove unnecessary distractions that are a gateway to mulitasking.

To this end, I’ve turned off email notifications on my computer except for my wife and dissertation committee (sorry, Mom). compose an email without seeing my inbox . And I use SaneBox to automatically move unimportant email out of my inbox before I see it.

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