Multi-tasking Will Kill You

Multi-tasking Will Kill You

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/06/multi-tasking-will-kill-you/

When I’m playing chess while talking on the phone, not only am I barely able to focus on the phone conversation but my chess rank goes down by about three standard deviations. In other words, the non-phone version of me can beat the phone version of me 95% of the time. That’s a big jump down.  And this is a result of doing just two tasks that I’ve done for tens of thousands of hours since I was a kid.

(via Instapaper)

I totally agree. The thing me and my ex-boss disagreed about the most, is multi tasking. I strongly believe (and feel), much like this article writer, that it can be done, but it severely harms the quality of your results.

What do you prefer, to complete 10 tasks at only 5% of your potential, or chose the most important one and knock it out the park?

 

I don’t believe in multi tasking. Do you?

2 thoughts on “Multi-tasking Will Kill You”

  1. I believe there is a big Q what the tasks are, if you plaing chsee, listening to an audio book can severely damage your results in both tasks. if you’re talking to your boss, however, it’s a good time to tide up your desk or music library

    1. Is it based on the assumption that the boss has nothing that’s too important to say? 🙂

      I think that if you multitask when you’re talking to him/her – even if it won’t harm the conversation – it will be much much harder for you to recollect later what you talked about and actually act on it. That’s how it was for me – I use to get off the phone and 20 minuets later I couldn’t remember what he wanted!

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