MARKED ASSIGNMENT

Marked Assignments: The Myth of Multitasking



Marked Assignments: The Myth of Multitasking

Summary of the Article

Popularly in the business world it is believed that the brain is the most advanced computer, and as such people are able to perform two or more tasks simultaneously. This is called multitasking. If multitasking as per the assumption of people is so useful than it should increase the productivity level of employees, but the fact is it does not (Crenshaw, 2008). The article “The Myth of Multitasking” highlights the adverse effects of multitasking on the daily routine of the life of the multitaskers. The author in the article defines the impact of multitasking on the neurological processing of the brain, besides mentioning economic impact of the same. The author makes assertion that in the workplace environment where the fit will sustain longer has increased the demand of multitaskers. With the recent financial crunch, companies now prefer to hire employees who have the ability to execute multiple tasks at once. This fact has been discussed by the author in the article; in fact the author attributed the multitasking as the regular way of life for most of the people living in developed countries.

The author has mentioned that multitasking is all about paying attention to different activities simultaneously. However, attention multitaskers dedicate to their respective tasks is quite weak in nature. The poor attention to any assignment or project, leads to the failure or ineffective implementation of the plan, which ultimately cause loss to the businesses. The author stress that besides people considers it their skills and capability to execute multiple tasks simultaneously, but the fact is they lose their IQ levels and fail to develop any further capability. While describing the adverse economic impact of multitasking, the author has mentioned that multitasking costs $650 per year to the economy of the United States of America.

Personal Response

In this article, multitasking is expressed, in many ways, that it has negative effects on the work that is being done. The author did a study on multitasking and was shown that high multitaskers are not better at anything, they're worse. The article focuses on people with high and low multitasking skills. Even the low multitaskers demonstrate poor quality in their work. They would have problems focusing and were easily distracted. Many multitaskers even thought they were the, “efficient exception.” In this study it was brought to the surface that multitasking is everywhere, whether it's watching television and texted friends or sitting in on a lecture and having a social network on the computer (Loukopoulos Dismukes & Barshi, 2009).

Multitasking happens when people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer to get the jobs done than if they were done separately. Multitasking, in many ways, challenges the quality of our everyday work. Many studies have shown that the quality of work done by multitaskers is far worse than ...