When I was a student we were taught how to study. You needed to find a quiet place, free of distractions where you could concentrate on the topic at hand. Organize your work so that you know what you need to do and can prioritize it so that your study time is efficient and effective.

Today’s student, in contrast, balks at these kinds of instructions. “I study better when I have the TV on, or am listening to my IPOD,” and so forth. There have even been a few articles, written by educators, no less, that seem to support this contention. Students today, they say, having been raised in a very different environment — one in which it is commonplace to do multiple things at once — are, in fact, quite capable of efficient and effective study even with the multitude of distractors they routinely deal with.

Many businessmen are proud of their ability to multitask. They are more productive, they say, when they can manage several tasks at once. For them it is a badge of honor, a kind of “Look at how good I am. Look at how much more I can juggle than you can.” Some managers even expect you to multitask and if you’re not, you’re not being productive.

To all these people I say “HOGWASH!”

Common sense and a little thought should be enough to tell you that anytime you split your attention between multiple activities something has to give. If you are correct, then you should be able to efficiently and effectively pay attention to, and respond appropriately to, several things at once. Think you can? Ask your spouse about your responses to him or her when you are reading an article, writing a note, or watching TV. I’m willing to bet that even over the phone you can tell when someone is “multitasking” while talking to you. They have this distant sound of disengagement.

How We’re Wired

Some research conducted over the last several years that underscores the reality that we aren’t as efficient at multitasking as we think we are. The prefrontal area of our brain is responsible for “executive functions”. This area is responsible for prioritizing tasks and assigning resources to them. Rubinstein, Meyer and Evans, writing in the Journal of Experimental Psychology and quoted in this APA article, point out that in their research any time a test subject toggled to a new task, time was lost.Moreover, the more complex the task, the more time was lost.And this makes sense. If I have to shift gears from, say, writing this article to, say, checking my email, time is lost in the physical act of shifting. Additionally I temporarily lose my “train of thought” and have to reorient myself first to the email and then back to the writing task. This ain’t rocket science, folks.

Now, it’s true that on the surface, you may appear more efficient: you always have multiple projects going, steadily working away at the various tasks. In fact, however, you are losing valuable time by shifting. There has been an increasing argument that perhaps the concept of multitasking is misguided.

Single Tasking

Let’s take a look at a different scenario. Let’s suppose I have five major tasks I need to do today. I set my priorities — which need to be done first — then get to work. Rather than picking up several at once, I select one and work on it until I’ve completed it. Because I have kept my focus on the project at hand, the quality of my work is likely better. After all, I didn’t lose my train of thought. And, more likely I finished it fairly quickly because I didn’t allow for interruptions. This article, for example, was written in a single setting, stopping only to check and verify the research I did for it. The email could wait until later.

Now I’ve got a completed task I can hand to my boss (or publish, as the case may be). No, I don’t have all five ready to hand him, but one of the five is complete. With that one in the bag, I can take a break, check my email, return phone calls, etc before moving on to the next one.

The next task gets the same kind of single minded attention and in so doing, it too gets completed fairly quickly and, again, with more than likely higher quality. And the process goes on.

This is not a new concept. Lord Chesterfield wrote in the 1700’s: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” Rather than seeing “single tasking”as a sign of weakness, he saw it as one of intelligence; the intelligent man had a disciplined mind that could keep his focus on a task to completion, where the unintelligent allowed distractions to draw him away.

Timothy Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Workweek, also argues for single tasking, as do the many who preach the concept of “simplifying”. By focusing on a single task at a time, and writing down those that still need to be completed (so that you don’t have to carry them around in your head which is, it self a form of multitasking) you simplify the demands on your life. Deal with one issue at a time, resolve it and then move to the next. It’s the plethora of outstanding tasks that create life’s complexity.

While I’ve done no research on this, I strongly suspect that if you sat down with some of the world’s most successful and powerful people, you’ll find that they, too, focus on one thing at a time, rather than trying to split their resources amongst a variety of demands.

Students and Multitasking

Russell Poldrack, a professor at the University of California, suggests that learning while multitasking not only makes learning more difficult, but makes recall of information more difficult. We use different areas of the brain to store information when we multitask. When we learn in a non-distracting environment, we use the hippocampus, part of the brain involved in storing and recalling information while we use the striatum, an area involved in learning new skills when we are distracted. This makes it more difficult to recall what we have learned.

That’s why students in my classes who are busy checking and responding to text messages, then look up and ask a question that has already been asked and answered — they weren’t really there mentally, so they didn’t hear. And still they argue they learn better in this environment.

And So What to Do?

In the end, it comes down to your own decisions. Dr. Edward Hallowell, psychiatrist and author of CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap! says that we need to recreate boundaries. Train yourself not to look at your phone messages or email every few minutes — perhaps every half hour would be better. Set limits, while setting specific times to carry out certain tasks such as returning phone calls and emails. Rather than letting all these distractions control you, take control of them. Take back your life and find a simplicity in it all.