Essay On Multitasking

Multitasking Multitasking refers to a single person performing multiple tasks at the same time. In modern days, multitasking has become a normal and common thing for people to do even if they do not realize they are doing it. Multitasking may be as simple as walking while chewing gum and as complicated as writing a paper while watching your favorite movie. When understanding multitasking, you must also understand the consequences that accompany it. With multitasking, “we face constant challenges to our ability to focus our attention” writes Richard Restak in Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era. If we are constantly trying to go back in forth between completing two or more tasks, we often end up distracted and perform at a lesser value.
Instead of taking time to fully listen to what another person is saying, we may try and hurry the conversation so we are able to focus on or begin a different task. Many times people, teenagers especially, will play on their phone while another person is talking to them causing them to only tune in to parts of the conversation. When people are constantly thinking about other things at the same time as trying to listen to another person talk, they may interrupt the person to get their thoughts in before forgotten. A patient stated, “I can’t seem to talk fast enough about what happened to me, nobody has time to listen anymore.” Many people are made to believe that multitasking is important for us to do when in reality it is not as efficient as everyone tends to believe. “Whenever you attempt to do “two things at once” your attention at any given moment is directed to one or the other activity to both at once,” Richard Restak states. Although it is possible to perform multiple tasks at the same time, it seems to not be in our best interest to do because it causes the efficiency of our tasks to