introduction

With life getting more demanding and hectic all the time, it seems there
only one way to cope: Multitasking, but is it the answer? can we really
multitask? what goes on in our brains when we try it?

In my writing I will give you some answers, what do studies tell us? also I‘ll try
to convince you why multitasking mostly doesn’t work?

I know that a lot of you will disagree with me and you’ll shock at what I will say
after, but please If you have any disagreement you can share it after you finish
reading what I notice here, and thank you.
Definition:
Before starting anything, we need to know what it is exactly the definition
of this term.

Multitasking is the ability to do more than one thing at a time, it’s doing
several tasks in parallel, not in succession,

let’s see some examples:

 Reading your favorite book and listening to Music;

 Eating popcorns and watching movies (we all like to do that);

 Talking and walking;

 This is an example about me is when I am trying to cook, studying for

the next exam, texting my colleague to make sure about the answers of
my previous exam and guess what is it the result! I‘ve burned my lunch,
it’s obvious I’m green at multitasking.

Nowadays, nearly 6 million webpages offer plenty of advice and methods of

multitasking. Not only how to do it but also how to excel on it, and most of us
are used to see enormous motivational videos and advertisements about what we
called a skill.
In addition to this, we have a job description that pushes employers to be
multitaskers if they want to get the job and a lot of examples that we live every
day.
Due to the technological revolution, multitasking becomes a trend so everyone
accepts it as an effective way thing to do, and why not to adopt it as a way of
life, NO, it’s wrong, it’s a way of lie
The hidden truth is: Multitasking is neither efficient nor effective, in the
world of results it will fail you every time.
If you didn’t trust the last sentence I’ve said before, so follow me, and pay
attention to what I’ll explain later.
The origin of the term multitasking:
The concept of humans doing more than one thing at a time has been studied
since 1920, but the term multitasking didn’t arrive until 1960, and what is more
shocking, the term was invented to describe computers, not people. To
illustrate this, during the sixties they invented computers with the ability to
quickly perform many tasks, for that they needed a new word to describe them
which is multitasking computers, but the fact here, it’s when computers want to
do more than one task, they switch back and forth until all tasks are done.
Due to the high speed of computers, we think that all of this work happens at the
same time but it’s not, it’s an illusion. Computers work alternately not
simultaneously.
If you follow me correctly a question that will pop into your head is what is the
relation between a multitasking computer and a multitasker as a human? the
answer here is that in time, the context was flipped and it turns to mean doing
many tasks by one resource (a person) so they mislead us.
To sum up, neither computers nor humans are multitaskers, it’s a
myth. what exists is switching and background tasking, we use them in our
daily life and we call them multitasking.
Switch tasking:
Let’s shed the light on switching.

It’s very natural if we think about “multitasking”, with nearly 4000 thoughts
flying in and out of our head, we decide to do all the tasks in the short time we
have, so we multitask as possible we can and we found ourselves in one of the
two cases: we can’t or we won’t do well .However it’s still a way of surviving
in this world since the dawn of time, to illustrate it, in the stone age the
humankind needs to pick some foods and pay attention to predators so he
multitasks I think you feel it is paradox, but what I‘m trying to say is that
multitasking it’s not a good way to manage our responsibilities ,it’s just a way to
screw everything, we think that we master multitasking but we’re just driving
ourselves bananas.
Switching between two things voluntarily or not two things happen:
1-you decide to switch it’s immediately,
2- the second one is to activate the new rules (reorientation) about the
new work you need to do.
Some common examples:
Two simple tasks watching tv and folding clothes
We agree that those least tasks are easy, we can quickly switch back and forth
and it’s relatively painless.
But when it comes to two complicated tasks like in your job, as an employer,
you work on your project along with your laptop, plenty of files needed to be
check and your co-worker pops into your desk to interrupt your workflow every
twenty minutes, don’t deny, it’s stressful and exhausting.
Background tasking :
One of the examples I said before was talking and walking, it’s a little bit
different, we will say to me we can do them at a time so how can you justify it?
so my answer will the next:
Yes, I agree with you we can do them simultaneously but there’s another
explication for this case. When we decide to do an action, we activate a part of
our brain, and depending on the thing that do, we receive some kind of data
So, if we do two different tasks that use different parts of the brain, they’ll be no
interference between them and we going to do them almost correctly, but to be
more specific, one of those tasks will be in the foreground and the other one is
in the background according to the importance and the difficulties.
And that’s what we call background tasking
A very common example: praying sometimes when we pray, we think about a
conversation or what we’ll do after finishing the pray. The background task here
is thinking about other pieces of stuff and the foreground here is praying
The catch here about background tasking is we do two activities at a time but
we don’t effectively focus on both of them that why sometimes we walk and
talk and sometimes we stumble without paying attention. Another example
when you’re walking across a gorge on a rope bridge unconsciously you will
stop talking and focus on your steps because you know that it’s dangerous and
you need all your concentration for it.
Time for test:
To know the test, you can see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=BCeGKxz3Q8Q