Is it possible to multitask

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What would be the alternative, removing the seats from your car to ensure you only drive alone? Block every website not named Gmail? A world of constant single-tasking is too absurd to contemplate. But science suggests that multitasking as we know it is a myth. We just switch very quickly between tasks, and it feels like we're multitasking.

It first appeared in a magazine called Datamation in , according to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the following sentence: "Multi-tasking is defined as the use of a single CPU for the simultaneous processing of two or more jobs. Over the next 65 years, computers have become multitasking wizards, with the ability to download movies while playing music while running complex programs and executing a million other functions we take for granted, yet in would have seemed like magic.

Meanwhile, the people operating these wondrous machines have not gotten any better at multitasking over the last 60 years. If anything, we have gotten worse. In The Shallows , a book about memory and the Internet, Nicholas Carr said the Web was changing the way we think, read and remember. Humans are hunters and hoarders of information. We seek, we find, we remember. If the Internet is helping us seek and find data, it is hurting our ability to absorb and retain it.

Before the Internet, the theory goes, our attentions expanded vertically. With the Internet, our focus extends horizontally, and shallowly. Why do we think we're so good at something that doesn't exist?

We compensate for our inability to multitask with a remarkable ability to single-task in rapid succession. Our brains aren't a volley of a thousand arrows descending on an opposing army.

Our brains are Robin Hood. One man with one bow firing on all comers, one at a time. Advertising on our site helps support our mission. We do not endorse non-Cleveland Clinic products or services. One study found that just 2.

Studies show that when our brain is constantly switching gears to bounce back and forth between tasks — especially when those tasks are complex and require our active attention — we become less efficient and more likely to make a mistake.

But when the stakes are higher and the tasks are more complex, trying to multitask can negatively impact our lives — or even be dangerous. So-called multitasking divides our attention. It makes it harder for us to give our full attention to one thing. For example, in studies , attempting to complete additional tasks during a driving simulation led to poorer driving performance.

Kubu says.