This CareerJournal.com article probably falls under the “interesting item that only interests me” category. The article basically debunks the theory that multitasking is effective and efficient. It isn’t, which is something I have often contended.
Great paragraph at the beginning:
Multitasking, a term cribbed from computers, is an information age creed that, while almost universally sworn by, is more rooted in blind faith than fact. It’s the wellspring of office gaffes, as well as the stock answer to how we do more with less when in fact we’re usually doing less with more. What now passes for multitasking was once called not paying attention.
We assess candidates and employees every day and we have yet to find any that truly excel at “multitasking.” We’ve seen many try to do it, but as the author points out, usually they are doing a poor job at two tasks instead of a stellar job at one task.
“Multitasking doesn’t look to be one of the great strengths of human cognition,” says James C. Johnston, a research psychologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “It’s almost inevitable that each individual task will be slower and of lower quality.”
And from later in the article:
While multitaskers seem to be accomplishing a lot, they are in most cases literally just going through the motions. It is easy for our brain to schedule many different tasks, one after the other. And we’ll gamely set out doing those tasks, some of which require little extra brain input and some of which require a lot. As a result, says Hal Pashler, director of the Attention and Perception Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, “your mouth can be moving while your brain is elsewhere.”
Yes, I noticed it to – Attention and Perception Lab? In California? Nonetheless, I think I have interviewed candidates whose brains were elsewhere.