Multitasking Can Make You Lose Focus

Multitasking Can Make You Lose Focus
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Multitasking Can Make You Lose Focus
The article “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus” by The New York Times writer Alina Tugend criticizes the value of multitasking as a way of dealing with several tasks and coping with the demands on our time. She reveals it to be a big illusion that does not help our productivity, as so many people are wont to think, but rather harms our engagement and productivity. After reading the article, my ideas about multitasking were changed and I began to see how it is impossible for our brains to handle multiple tasks as I would have liked to think. I agree with Tugend that multitasking is counterproductive and only serves to increase stress, effort, and pressure.
Trying to do several tasks at once gives one the illusion that they are good at maintaining the balancing act and can get more work done in a shorter time. However, I now think that juggling between several tasks takes a serious toll on one’s cognitive ability or even the capacity to tune out distractions. While our brains are capable of switching tasks in a short span of time, it is impossible to give tasks that require real concentration the focus they need when performing them concurrently, often with disastrous consequences CITATION Tug08 \l 1033 (Tugend, 2008). I think that for such tasks, or any other errand that demands our attention, it is better to concentrate on one task at a time. For instance, it is impossible to give a project that requires mulling over the consideration it deserves if one’s attention is divided.
Besides, multitasking also affects our attention span: it is eas...