Yet research clearly shows that trying to perform two tasks simultaneously not only takes longer but the results can contain a greater number of mistakes.
The reason for this is that the human brain creates a bottleneck whenever a "planning" task is required - it will restart and refocus on each task. This process takes time, meaning that trying to do two tasks simultaneously will take longer than trying to do them in sequence.
Additionally while juggling multiple tasks, people will often find their error rate higher than when focusing on one task.
Memory is also thought to be impaired while trying to handle multiple tasks, so if the task requires commitment to long-term memory it is best to focus solely on that task.
All of this means you will now come across more people who recommend that multi-tasking is left behind in the workplace. One alternative is practicing uni-tasking.
As the name suggests uni-tasking means performing one task at a time. The example often used is that of email. The advice being to process your inbox in several blocks throughout the day - rather than trying to respond to each message as it arrives.
It seems that focus could become the new multi-tasking aspirational job skill.
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