How To Safely Multitask: You Can't
By Amanda Eiden
Just last night, I decided to make pasta for dinner, and I took the opportunity to check my phone while the pasta was cooking. I was busy typing away when I heard water hitting the burner—it was rapidly boiling over! How did I get distracted so quickly?
I realized that where I went wrong here was that I believed I could evenly divide my attention between my phone and watching the pasta boil: I was trying to multitask. Clearly, this did not end well for me, but how was I able to forget about my dinner so easily?
It’s helpful to begin by looking at why multitasking does not work. Bonnie explains that the right and left sides of the prefrontal cortex of our brains try to work separately instead of together when we multitask, constantly switching between the two sides. This process makes doing our work take 40% longer than if we did things separately. I was not simultaneously cooking dinner and checking my phone, I was only doing one thing at a time, constantly switching between what I was doing.
So, our attempted “multitasking” makes us take longer to complete our work, and it also diminishes our working memory, so it makes us more prone to making mistakes. This explains why I forgot about my pasta boiling; my working memory was so overworked while I was concentrated on my phone that I actually did forget I was cooking.
Why should we care? Multitasking makes us feel more productive or encourages us to work for longer, but now we know it makes us less productive and lowers the quality of our work. Maybe we don’t care if we occasionally let our pasta boil over, but there are more negative aspects of multitasking to consider.
If you’re like me, you probably believe that the distraction of talking on the phone and driving comes from physically holding your phone and looking away from the road. In Julia Shaw’s The Memory Illusion, she explains that it is not physically holding the cellphone, but rather the failure to multitask effectively, that proves dangerous while talking on the phone and driving. She goes on to explain how misleading our current driving laws are.
This is something I think most people are simply unaware of. Many states now have a “hands-free” rule for talking on the phone. This makes it seem safe to talk on the phone while driving, even though the real distraction is talking itself. How is this allowed?
Research on the hands-free rule proves that while talking hands-free, drivers were less likely to create a durable memory of objects seen while driving and talking on the phone, meaning they were not able to focus full attention on the road. They were distracted! It also notes that this phenomenon does not occur as much while conversing with passengers.
Additional research has shown that even when people are consciously aware of the dangers of distracted driving, that they still engage in doing so because they have a history of the act having a positive outcome. In other words, they think it must be safe because it’s never caused an accident for them in the past.
I am guilty of this too; we tend to think that if both our hands are on the steering wheel, that we are safe to talk on the phone. However, now that we are aware of this information, we cannot continue our poor habits, especially when it could lead to harming ourselves or others while driving.
What can we do? First, while trying to stray away from mental multitasking, we can focus on one task at a time. Whether it be for school or work, make a list of everything that needs to get done and pick one thing to complete at a time. Then, do not worry about the other tasks until the one you’ve chosen is done. This will help you be more efficient and make fewer mistakes, it will probably save you time also! Next time, I’ll have to focus on cooking dinner first, and check my phone later.
While knowing the physical dangers of multitasking, we need to simply not use our phones at all when driving. If something is important enough where we need to take a phone call, we can pull over or into a gas station and call that person back, they will understand. You may also consider eliminating other distractions, like fiddling with the radio or getting distracted with your thoughts. If you do not drive, do not speak to someone on the phone if you know that they’re driving, you could be saving their life.
Now that you are aware of what a poor multitasker you really are, I hope you can change your habits and become more productive in your work and safer while driving. Additionally, I encourage you to share this information, especially that about driving distracted, with other people in your life. Sometimes just being aware of where our minds tend to fault us can be a literal lifesaver.
References
Bonnie, E. (2017, July 28). Addicted to Multitasking: The Scientific Reasons You Can't Stop Juggling Work. Retrieved May 26, 2020, from https://www.wrike.com/blog/addicted-multitasking-scientific-reasons-you-cant-stop-juggling-work/
Cellular Phone Use and Texting While Driving Laws. (2019). Retrieved May 26, 2020, from https://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/cellular-phone-use-and-texting-while-driving-laws.aspx
David L. Strayer, & Frank A. Drews. (2007). Cell-Phone: Induced Driver Distraction. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(3), 128–131. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00489.x
Lee, J. D. (2014). Dynamics of Driver Distraction: The process of engaging and disengaging. Annals of advances in automotive medicine. Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine. Annual Scientific Conference, 58, 24–32. https://www-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.ezproxy.mnsu.edu/pmc/articles/PMC4001670/.
Shaw, J. (2017). The Memory Illusion. London, England: Random House Books.