Sean Dagony-Clark's List: OWD14

Articles and research.

Summary of the 2009 Stanford study.

Excerpt:
"They found that heavy multitaskers-those who multitask a lot and feel that it boosts their performance-were actually worse at multitasking than those who like to do a single thing at a time. The frequent multitaskers performed worse because they had more trouble organizing their thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching from one task to another."

Stanford's summary of their 2009 study.

Excerpt:
"Again, the heavy multitaskers underperformed the light multitaskers.

"They couldn't help thinking about the task they weren't doing," Ophir said. "The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can't keep things separate in their minds."

The researchers are still studying whether chronic media multitaskers are born with an inability to concentrate or are damaging their cognitive control by willingly taking in so much at once. But they're convinced the minds of multitaskers are not working as well as they could."

Video summary of the 2009 study.

APA's 2006 summary of numerous research papers finds (1) humans are not able to multitask and (2) multitasking reduces efficiency. Their conclusion: avoid multitasking on complex tasks.

Excerpt
"Although switch costs may be relatively small, sometimes just a few tenths of a second per switch, they can add up to large amounts when people switch repeatedly back and forth between tasks. Thus, multitasking may seem efficient on the surface but may actually take more time in the end and involve more error. Meyer has said that even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time."

Study found that most people multitask poorly, while a few people might be "supertaskers."

Abstract:
"Driver distraction is a significant source of motor-vehicle accidents.... concurrent cell phone use significantly increases the risk of a motor-vehicle accident.... using a cell phone induces a form of inattention blindness, where drivers fail to notice information directly in their line of sight.... real-world cell-phone interference cannot be practiced away.... a small group of "supertaskers" can [multitask]."

Un-peer-reviewed / un-published research, but potentially interesting as support of the U Utah study.

Summary:
“What we found is on average most people perform better when focusing on one single task,” said Ms. Ulmer. “But this one group of people—the high media multitaskers—performed best when they are in a multitasking environment. The high media multitaskers actually excelled in the multitasking room.”

Excerpt:
"A recent happiness study from Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert found that the more our minds wander, the less happy we are.... In short, being mentally "present" and focused on the task at hand really does matter - quite a lot, in fact."

"A free Mac application to help you avoid distracting websites."

Offers Mac, Win, iOS, and Android apps that sync to a cloud account.

"RescueTime helps you understand your daily habits so you can focus and be more productive."