Thursday's Wall Street Journal presented serious studies about the downside of multitasking. Do you find yourself meeting with several people, while reading email, and answering the phone?
According to Sue Shellenbarger, "A growing body of scientific research shows one of jugglers' favorite time-saving techniques, multitasking, can actually make you less efficient and, well, stupider. Trying to do two or three things at once or in quick succession can take longer overall than doing them one at a time, and may leave you with reduced brainpower to perform each task."
She goes on to say that people who multitask too frequently experience various problems: lapses in attentiveness, loss of concentration, gaps in short term memory, communication problems, and stress symptoms. If the multitasks each require the same part of the brain, efficiency is a problem.
The most serious problem I see in organizations is the manager who cannot leave his email screen long enough to pay attention to people trying to talk with him.
11:53:14 PM
Multitasking Pitfalls 
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