Do one thing at a time — don’t reply to messages while in a meeting
Every time you switch tasks, your reaction time slows down and errors become more likely. People who regularly keep multiple screens open at once don’t actually get better at multitasking; in fact, they perform worse on task-switching tests.
No cost at all. It does take a bit of willpower to resist…
Switching between tasks clearly slows reaction time and raises the chance of mistakes. This conclusion comes f…
No cost at all. It does take a bit of willpower to resist replying to messages during a meeting.
Switching between tasks clearly slows reaction time and raises the chance of mistakes. This conclusion comes from a review of multiple studies. One lab study involved university students. Those who frequently use several types of media at the same time are known as heavy media multitaskers. They’re more easily distracted by unrelated things and unrelated memories, and they also perform worse on task-switching tests.
Monsell (2003). Task switching. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00028-7；Ophir, Nass & Wagner (2009). Cognitive control in media multitaskers. PNAS. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0903620106
Open source linkExactly how much extra effort task-switching requires varies a lot depending on the task, so no single number can be given here. The Ophir study compares people at one single point in time, so it’s hard to tell whether multitasking makes attention worse, or whether people with poorer attention skills simply prefer to multitask.