Multitasking: Good or Bad?

Written by Nurhanis Hazry

What is Multitasking?

Multitasking is a skill to settle more than one thing at a time instead of having to cope with various ranges of responsibilities one by one. Multitasking is the skill that is related to the quality in adapting multitasked workloads. This skill encourages people to take in more than one task to their typical workday. In general, multitasking is an apparent human ability to perform than one task, or activity within a short period. For example, multitasked mother can send email to her boss while milk up her baby instead of doing something else (reading a book, workout, talking on the phone and etc.) at a time.

However, working on several things at once possibly creates great pressure on which ultimately leads to the negative impact on individual productivity. Thus, there have been many debates over the pros and cons regarding on these matters.

The Pros of Multitasking

Multitasking provides some benefits for human. By performing huge number of tasks simultaneously, it allows us to finish all those things within seconds. In terms of beneficial purposes, multitasking also:

  • stimulate creativity
  • helps in managing time effectively
  • makes a person not to depend on others
  • maximizes the optimization of working hours
  • provides better chances of survival than others

The Cons of Multitasking

However, doing many things at once is reflective of diminished focus. This usually comes out in the producing poor cognitive performance of human quality compared to someone who is assigned to do only one thing. It also:

  • leads to drop in best productivity
  • increases stress levels
  • leads memory impairment (repeatedly require constant reminders of what should to do)
  • causes lack of focus
  • places one person in hurry to finish the task soon

To sum up, we must be very careful and pay extra attention while doing multiple tasks. Allocate more time to the most important things to avoid unwanted issues. With provided pros and cons above, surely too much of multitasking activities reduce our focus, productivity, and even in daily performance. Try to avoid it while concentrate more on the task to give the best of quality of work!

 

References:

  1. Aratani L. (February 26, 2007). Teens Can Multitask, But What are the Costs? The Washington Post.
  2. Delbridge, K. A. (2000). Individual Differences In Multi-Tasking Ability: Exploring A Nomological Network; Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan.
  3. Foerde, K., Knowlton, B. J., and Poldrack, R. A. (2006, August). Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction, 103(31), 11778-11783.

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