Health Increased brain stress caused by multitasking

Health Increased brain stress caused by multitasking / Health News
Multitasking affects the quality of work and causes stress
Doing two or three tasks at the same time is part of the supreme discipline in working life and is particularly effective. In the long term, however, the opposite is the case. Wolfgang Panter, president of the Association of German Plant and Factory Physicians (VDBW), warned that multitasking leads to stress in the brain. Instead of gaining efficiency, the multitasking users would tire more quickly and make more mistakes. The parallel processing of several tasks should therefore be better avoided, explained the expert.


Many people used multitasking at work more or less successfully to work off the daily mountain of tasks more efficiently. During the call, emails are still being read quickly, important information is researched on various websites on the Internet or texts are edited on the PC. Although modern information and communication technologies have significantly expanded the possibilities of multitasking, the stress in the brain remains the same. The parallel processing of several tasks is in the end less efficient than the processing in sequence, as well as the findings of a research team around Professor Clifford Nass of Stanford University. For years, Nass and colleagues have been exploring the consequences and perceived benefits of multitasking.

Multitasking leads to stress in the brain. Picture: alphaspirit-fotolia

Multitasking calls for a high mental price
Although people use multitasking on a daily basis, social researchers have always pointed out "that it is impossible to process more than one set of information at a time. The brain just can not do this, "said Nass and colleagues in 2009, explaining their research. Many scientists have been of the opinion that "people who seem to be multitasking need to have excellent control over what they think and what they pay attention to," according to the then Stanford University Communication. The subsequent studies by Prof. Nass and colleagues have shown, however, that multitaskers "pay a high mental price" and in the recording of information, as well as in their classification and memory, performing significantly worse than subjects who perform their duties of Work off in order.

Information processing suffers from multitasking
Professor Clifford Nass explained that multitaskers - despite their practice of simultaneously handling multiple tasks - constantly have to switch back and forth in the brain, creating significant difficulties in classifying the relevance of the information.

The multitaskers are veritable "suckers for irrelevance," according to Prof. Nass. They would be distracted from everything. A weighting of the information is much harder for them than other people and they have more difficulty remembering the important information. Also, the brain is put in a permanent state of stress, as constantly lightning fast between the different tasks had to be switched back and forth. The president of the Association of German Plant and Factory Physicians, Wolfgang Panter, comes in his current press release to a similar negative assessment of multitasking.

Doing tasks in turn
Ultimately, multitasking causes users to tire more quickly and make mistakes more easily, according to the VDBW president. Here we urgently advise against multitasking and instead recommend working through the tasks one after the other.

If in doubt, the creation of a ranking list or priority list can help. Although occasional interruptions caused by a call or a new email in the inbox can hardly be avoided in today's world of work, the expert recommends to stick roughly to the priority list. In order to avoid disruptive interruptions as much as possible, clear agreements in the office are an advantage. In this way, at least the interruptions by colleagues in important tasks can be largely avoided. Also, help to go offline for 30 to 60 minutes every day to work in a concentrated way during this time. Particularly important tasks could be completed so quickly. At the same time, the parallel handling of many tasks should also help those people who master my multitasking better. Ultimately, not only the quality of their work, but also their psyche suffers. (sb, fp)