When is multitasking good

They also asked students to come up with a single creative idea to expand the offerings of a fictional toy company that was the subject of the conference call. Their ideas were evaluated for creativity. Along the way, the students were measured on their level of activation and cognitive flexibility. As in the first study, students who multitasked produced ideas that were coded as more creative. The activation and cognitive flexibility assessments also showed that those two mental states, in that order, led to greater creativity.

To see if the activation and cognitive flexibility are important mediators in real-world environments, Melwani and Kapadia conducted a study of restaurant servers. They surveyed restaurant servers from 20 restaurants — some on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, when the restaurants were slower and thus the servers multitasked less, and some on Friday and Saturday nights, when restaurants and servers were busier.

The researchers again measured activation and cognitive flexibility, and then had the servers complete a creative task used in other creativity research: drawing a space alien. The drawings can be coded for creativity based on the extent to which they differ from humanoid characteristics. Again, the researchers found that servers were more creative after multitasking on busier Friday and Saturday shifts, and their creativity was mediated by higher levels of activation and cognitive flexibility.

The way to bring some fresh ideas is to do something else entirely. AWS Deloitte Genpact. Events Innovation Festival. Follow us:. So, what can be done to counteract the negative effects of multitasking?

First, even chronic multitaskers can learn skills that will improve their brain function over time: Clifford Nass recommends focusing on a single task for at least twenty minutes before moving on to the next. If you must multitask, try to switch back and forth between no more than two projects at a time; the more tasks a multitasker tries to complete at once, the harder their brain must work — and the less likely they are to remain productive.

The good news is that educators can model multitasking best practices for their students. Because they were raised with smartphones and the internet, teenagers and young adults are even more susceptible to the negative effects of multitasking, including absentmindedness, lack of focus, and frequent mistakes. At the same time, students can still learn good work and study habits that can counteract the impulse the multitask. Skip to main content x Sign In. Share This Article d a E.

But, one experiment found that this obsession with media multitasking can actually be beneficial. They needed to identify a particular shape on a computer screen full of similar images—all of which were changing color. The results? Participants who media multitasked most frequently were far more effective at multi sensory integration.

Quite the opposite—it helped them identify the target shape more quickly. A study conducted at the University of Florida shares similar support for the multitasking phenomenon. Participants were asked to sit on exercise bikes and pedal at a speed they found comfortable for two minutes.

After that, they pedaled again—with a screen in front of them that presented twelve different cognitive tests at varying levels of difficulty. Then, they were asked to complete the same cognitive tests while seated in a chair.

The results surprised even the researchers. So, multitasking had no dire effects on their cognitive function. Even better, it improved their physical performance. Vanderkam cites exercising with a friend as a solid example. Peter Bregman mentions a similar use of time in his article for Forbes , where he discusses how he managed to successfully combine exercise with his commute to work.