Do one thing at a time — don’t reply to messages while in a meeting
Grade BMedium benefitTimeFreeLittle timeSome willpower
As soon as you switch tasks, reactions slow and mistakes become more likely. People who often use several kinds of media at once have not trained themselves to do several things at once; they do worse on task-switching tests.
- Cost
- No cost at all. It does take a bit of willpower to resist replying to messages during a meeting.
- Benefit
- 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.
- Notes
- Exactly 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.
Sources · 2
- Monsell (2003). Task switching. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00028-7
- Ophir, Nass & Wagner (2009). Cognitive control in media multitaskers. PNAS. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0903620106