Multitasking May Be Making You Dumber
A few weeks ago I was in Philadelphia on a trip. One afternoon I went to the Franklin Institute, a world-class interactive science museum. One of the exhibits explained that multi-tasking is actually counter-productive. This did not surprise me. My mom has been telling me this for years.
However, the next claim was startling. The exhibit stated that it was likely that multi-tasking could permanently damage your brain. After I returned home, I was still thinking about this and decided to do some more research on it.
I found an article from 2014 that does a good job of summing up the studies.
"Multitasking Damages Your Brain and Career, New Studies Suggest"
If these studies are correct, most people have many habits in need of correction. Texting while having conversations, watching tv while working, and writing emails while fixing dinner might be causing permanent damage to our brains.
Most of us are aware of our diminished abilities while we are multitasking, but that is an inefficiency we have become comfortable with. What we must consider is whether the temporary pleasure of multitasking is worth a permanently impaired mind.
Given that most of us will give the obvious answer, we are now tasked with keeping our minds focused on a singular task at a time. No matter how mundane it is, we must fix our attention to it. Doing so will cause us to be more aware of the details, and prevent us from gradually losing our ability to concentrate and utilize our critical thinking skills.