We're constantly getting bombarded with messages encouraging us to multitask but multitasking is not as easy nor as simple as we have been led to believe.
If you are engaged in very routine tasks that don't conflict much with each other in terms of their required inputs, outputs and mental processes, then you may be OK. But when multitasking gets tougher, you are probably better off to concentrate on just one task at a time.
To improve your multitasking skills, practice the following in multitasking situations with a variety of different kinds of task priorities:
Pay very careful attention to how tasks are divided into various subparts. Tasks have natural breakpoints in them, where one part of a task is joined to the next. If you can manage to stop at these break-points when switching between tasks, that's better than if you stop in midstream while some part of a task is still under way. By practicing this, you can learn to schedule actions in tasks so you become better at switching efficiently from one task to another.
Are women better at juggling tasks than men?
Many evolutionary psychologists have argued there is a behaviorial divide that has been inherited from gender roles among early humans. In prehistoric times, men served solely as hunters, anthropologist Helen Fisher has said, while women handled every other job. Stereotypes of women being more efficient multitaskers persist: A 2003 Rutgers University survey found three-quarters of women think women are better at multitasking than men. One-third of men agreed.
But, if this were ever true of our ancestors, it isn't the case for people today, some scientists say. Paul W. Burgess, a neuroscientist at University College, London, says his studies have revealed scant performance differences between male and female multitaskers, though he has found that men and women perceive their multitasking capability differently.
Of course, when it comes to multitasking, there may be no real winner:
In recent years, scientists have found that it is almost more efficient to do tasks one at a time, rather than all at once.
Sources: Dr. David Meyer, University of Michigan mathematical and cognitive psychology professor and The Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2007