Multitasking Can Make You Lose. Um. Focus By Alina Tugend

In her essay, Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus, Alina Tugend discusses many effects of multitasking. We think that multitasking is a way to keep us more efficient, but in reality it may be doing just the opposite. Tugend says that,”psychologists, neuroscientists, and others are finding that it [multitasking] can put us under a great deal of stress and actually make us less efficient. It turns out that most of the time when we think we’re multitasking, we actually aren’t. Our brains are just switching between tasks very quickly, not focusing on both at the same time. She sights Edward M. Hallowell to support this, Hallowell says, “Multitasking is shifting focus from one task to another in rapid succession. I t gives the illusion that were are simultaneously tasking, but we’re really not. It’s like playing tennis with three balls.” Another effect that multitasking can have, can actually turn out to be fatal. Texting while driving is a perfect example of trying to switch between two complicated tasks. Your brain takes more time to switch between complicated tasks, and even though it’s only a few seconds longer it can …show more content…
Also, discussing the causes is not the purpose of her article so that could be another reason she chose not to include much on the causes. As I said there are a multitude of causes of multitasking, but I think a huge contributor is the overall hastened pace of society. Everything is getting faster and more immediate, I mean we can receive a package from China in less than 24 hours, and with texting we get immediate feedback. People feel like they need to multitask to keep up with our fast paced world. I also think that people are increasingly busy in today’s society, and they feel like there is not enough time in the day to do everything they need to get done. As a “solution” we multitask to try to fit everything in to our