Whenever you need to pay attention, an area toward the front of the brain called the prefrontal cortex springs to action. This area, which spans the left and right sides of the brain, is part of the brain’s motivational system. It helps to focus your attention on a goal and coordinates messages with other brain systems to carry out the task. While the right and left sides of the prefrontal cortex work together when focused on a single task, the sides work independently when people attempt to perform two tasks at once.
Researcher Etienne Koechlin who studied the brain's behavior mentioned above says that although we can easily switch between two tasks, “we might be in great trouble when we try to juggle more than two tasks, simply because we have only two frontal lobes.”
There is also evidence that it can take your brain 15 to 25 minutes to get back to where it was after stopping to check email. I'd say that zaps your productivity big time!
No kidding. There is scientific evidence that multitasking, or task-switching, lowers your I.Q. Researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London studied 1,100 workers at a British company and found that multitasking with electronic media caused a greater decrease in IQ than smoking pot or losing a night’s sleep. IQ drops of 15 points for multitasking men lowered their scores to the average range of an 8-year-old child.
A study out of Stanford University confirms this too. Researchers compared multi-taskers to single-taskers and found that the single-taskers performed better on their tests. Psychology researcher, Anthony Wagner summed it up. “When they’re in situations where there are multiple sources of information coming from the external world or emerging out of memory, they’re not able to filter out what’s not relevant to their current goal. That failure to filter means they’re slowed down by that irrelevant information.”
In business, if you are trying to run your day-to-day operations, make sales calls and post on social media all at once, not only will you be depleted and have nothing left for yourself or your loved ones, but mistakes will be made that can jeopardize your business. In the video above, Founder and CEO of eWomenNetwork, Sandra Yancey, says it's time to quit trying to multitask. It is not a badge of honor. In fact trying to multitask can adversely affect your bottom line.
Make a Profit and Make a Difference For those of you who think you can’t make a profit with purpose, you are dead wrong. The Founder & CEO of eWomenNetwork , Sandra Yancey, created the eWomenNetwork Foundation 501(c)(3) while her company was still in its infancy. Her company is now a multi-million dollar global business that has contributed many thousa ....Read More
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