By Kyle Freiburger, BA and Steven A. Hamon, Ph. D
Multi-tasking” is held up as a mark of competency in business and home life. The sheer volume of communication that constant accessibility generates seems to demand that, to be successful and included, we must “multi-task.” The problem is that “multi-tasking” is a myth that overrides basic design characteristics of the human brain. “Multi-tasking” can wear out our brains.
Try a social experiment when you eat out. Order using three bits of information in a single sentence, something like: “I’ll have a cheeseburger, no fries, to go, please.” Count how often your server asks “Okay, would you like fries with that, and is it for here or to go?” In The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin notes that the human brain processes about 120 bits of information per second. Listening to one person requires 60 bits per second. This means that you could (sort of) follow two informational inputs at once. A third input adds what Levitin calls “simultaneous inattention.” People who believe they are multitasking are actually simultaneously toggling attention among numerous information inputs, each of which receives only partial focus!
“Multi-tasking” wears out the brain in three ways. First, whenever we shift attention, a lot of fuel (i.e. glucose) is burned. “Fuel consumption” during “multi-tasking” is enormous compared to the more efficient method of focusing on one task to completion. The brain reaches exhaustion because it is literally “running on empty.”
Second, “multi-tasking” causes the brain to “upregulate.” This can take two forms; one we experience as dread, the other as excitement.
The “dread form” of upregulation is likely to occur as work demands leave us feeling “buried.” The “excitement” form of feels nicer, but is just as hard on you in the long run (Excitement may occur, for example, as we search shopping sites for the best deal). Both forms of “multi-tasking” mobilize stress hormones. Cortisol readies the brain for a higher state of responsiveness. It promotes an increase in blood sugar (translation: more fuel for energy) and regulates the immune system in case it is needed to handle a wound. Adrenaline readies the body to fight or flee. Both hormones were designed for short-term upregulation events. If one artificially keeps them elevated through “multi-tasking” they lead to brain-fog.
The third, most insidious effect of “multi-tasking” is that it hijacks the brain’s orienting response. Occurring primarily in the pre-frontal cortex (the thinking/deciding part of the brain), and in a structure called the hippocampus, the orienting response originally helped humans survive by detecting subtle changes, say, light and shadow variations that signaled the movements of a tiger. Today the orienting response helps detect novel aspects of a task or problem. When we orient successfully to some new aspect of a problem, the brain regions that house the orienting response receive bursts of dopamine, the “reward neurotransmitter.” When orienting results in problem solution, the whole brain gets a bath in endogenous opioids, the same compounds in our brains that produce “runner’s high.”
Enter the devil. When the novel stimuli your orienting response detects are multiple open screens and pop-ups, it gets maneuvered into a false sense of accomplishment. Rather than doing one task to completion, the orienting response attempts multiple tasks with insufficient time to complete any one of them well. The result is loss of ability to focus on what is important. Because each click yields a neurochemical reward, they all become important and we fall into a bottomless chasm of undertakings.
The idea that we have to “multi-task” seems correct because the digital era affords access to more information than was available to the three previous generations combined! There are, however, viable alternatives to “multi-tasking” to get things done. Computers do simultaneous wonders rapidly because they have multiple processors, each of which can be dedicated to a different task. Our brains constitute one marvelous processor that works via association.
To illustrate, consider — as Levitin does — the words “fire truck.” Computers offer an array of facts about firetrucks, including history, types, and so on. The computer’s many processors answer multiple questions simultaneously — they “multi-task.” What they cannot do is associate the term “fire truck” with parades you saw as a kid, with the saga of how your grandfather’s life was saved by people who came in one, or say, the gripping heroics of firefighters we all share related to 9-11.
It is in what arises by association from data that the most meaningful problem solving and relating are achieved. “If ever thou didst hold me in thy heart,” wrote Shakespeare of dying Hamlet, “…tell my story.” Customers and lovers alike are impressed by facts, but are brought closer by narratives that associate them. Living beyond the myth of “multi-tasking” involves training the brain to orient to the salient aspects of any information, give sustained attention to them, then refresh itself using information-extenders to sort and hold the rest. In Part II of this series, we’ll consider how to achieve this.
Kyle Freiburger, BA, is a graduate of Bradley University and a member of the Support Staff of The Antioch Group, Inc. who plans to become a Licensed Clinical Psychologist. Steven A. Hamon, Ph. D is president of The Antioch Group, Inc. and a Licensed Clinical Psychologist specializing in treatment of stress disorders, including post-traumatic stress. For more information you may call them at The Antioch Group, 309-692-6622, 6615 N. Big Hollow Road, Peoria.