Six Reasons Why Multitasking Is Unproductive

2. A recent Harvard Business Review study found that workers who finish tasks one at a time accomplish 52% more than workers that multitask in the same period of time.

3. Multitasking makes the bigger picture harder to see. Researchers have discovered that multitasking causes a backup in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the part that controls task management. As a result, drained brains have a hard time grasping the big picture.

4. Recent research at Ohio State found that multitasking doesn’t satisfy cognitive needs.

5. Neuroscientist Russ Poldrack discovered in a 2006 study that what we learn during multitasking isn’t as beneficial as things learned while focusing on a singular task. The knowledge gained wasn’t as flexible, and multitaskers weren’t able to generalise what they had learned.

6. Clifford Nass, a researcher and professor at Stanford University, found that chronic multitaskers use their brains less effectively. They can’t filter out irrelevant stuff, get distracted and can’t manage their working memory.