Maria Konnikova Quotes

Multitasking divides your attention and leads to confusion and weakened focus.

Task switching is hard because we do not control what is on our mind. Despite our efforts, the original task continues to occupy our mental bandwidth. Although we can control where our time goes, we cannot fully control how our bandwidth is allocated.

Experts say you can't concentrate on more than one task at a time.

Even though we think we're getting a lot done, ironically, multitasking makes us demonstrably less efficient.

In effect, dividing your attention means that neither (or none) of the things you're working on is really getting the full effect of your intelligence, and that it in the end takes you longer than it would if you did one thing at a time.

Maybe the reason my memory is so bad is that I always do at least two things at once. It's easier to forget something you only half-did or quarter did.

Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption.

Most of the work on multitasking suggests that it generally makes you less efficient, not more.

What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.

When you think you're listening to several conversations at once, they tell me, you may really simply be time sharing - that is, listening a little bit to this one, a little bit to that one.

Serial tasking is hard because switching tasks is hard, even when the tasks are easy and similar. In some experiments, bilingual speakers are asked to read out numbers, first in one language and then midway in another language. They often stumble at the switch, taking many tries before they hit their stride again.

Sadly, I haven't had a brain cell since I had children.

Multi-tasking arises out of distraction itself.

I have the attention span of a mosquito from multitasking and all the things that have affected my poor little brain.

There's no such thing as multitasking.

If you try to multitask in the classic sense of doing two things at once, what you end up doing is quasi-tasking. It's like being with children. You have to give it your full attention for however much time you have, and then you have to give something else your full attention.

I think people who multitask pay a huge price. They think they're being extra productive, and I think when you multitask so much you don't have time to think about anything deeply, you are giving the world an advantage you shouldn't do, and practically everybody is drifting into that mistake.

It seems like I'm thinking 400 hours a day; that's kind of how it feels.

I think that we get so distracted with our smartphones... It takes your body and your brain time to switch between tasks. If we can focus on what we're doing, we'll be more productive at that task.

You wouldn't read 'Anna Karenina' and try to work on the computer at the same time, would you?

There's a lot of research that indicates the brain rewards us for multi-tasking by giving us a shot of neurochemicals whenever we start a new task. Our brain rewards us even as our performance in every task degrades. We don't even notice that our performance is bad. We don't care. We feel like masters of the universe because our brain is chemically rewarding us for multi-tasking.

... he was juggling issues and solving problems, which was why his brain had no space left for memories.

I do think to some extent multitasking is a way of fooling ourselves that we're being exceptionally efficient.

It's a skill that people are born with. Either you're a focuser or you're a multitasky person. I am a full-focus person.

Everyone is always having their attention divided between the world of the people [they're] with and this other reality.