The Multi-Tasking Penalty

In the race to accomplish more and more, it is tempting to think about multi-tasking. How many of you feel like you’re multi-tasking all the time?

Let me tell you about the multi-tasking penalty. The Journal of Experimental Psychology had a paper showing it takes 4 times as long to process a task when you are multi-tasking (doing several tasks) than it would if you focused on each task one at a time. Hmm, not so good.

There was also a three year study of 600 computer programmers which showed a direct consequence of 20 minutes when a programmer had to switch from one task to another, and a cumulative loss of an hour a day over that of the programmers who were interrupted less often.

Two good studies to remember the next time you are tempted to multi-task.