Many of us wear the ability to juggle multiple tasks as a badge of honor. We see ourselves as finely tuned machines capable of wrapping up four reports while answering email and eating lunch. We no longer kick back and watch television; we cozy up with our smartphone to live tweet the program while flipping between the six Internet browser tabs we have open on our tablet at any given time. Killing two birds with one stone is no longer the norm: we want to take down six at once.

While we have convinced ourselves multitasking is the most effective way to cross items off our to-do list, recent studies disagree. Multitasking could be doing more harm than good by slowing us down and making us sloppy. In some cases – like texting and driving – it can be downright dangerous.

By Any Other Name

Some experts have given multitasking a new name: task switching. There are some tasks – like cooking dinner while balancing a baby on your hip or chatting with the neighbor while weeding the garden – which we can undertake simultaneously. But when it comes to the tough stuff, multitasking requires your brain to switch rapidly between tasks.

Psychologist Guy Winch, author of Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Guilt and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries, says task switching hinders productivity because a person’s energy and attention is expended on the shift rather than the task itself.

“It’s like a pie chart, and whatever we’re working on is going to take up the majority of that pie,” he says. “There’s not a lot left over for other things, with the exception of automatic behaviors like walking or chewing gum.”

Brain Game

The brain is an amazing and complex organ but it too has its limitations. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for planning complex cognitive behavior and executive function. Its left and right sides work together when focused on a singular task. In a 2010 study, French scientists discovered the sides work independently when a secondary task is introduced. Put a third task in the mix and people routinely lose track of what is going on – there are no lobes left to do the work.

So if true multitasking is a cognitively impossible endeavor, why are people so attached to the idea? Professor Daniel Levin, of the Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience Department at McGill University, suspects it has to do with our brain’s reward system. Switching tasks depletes the glucose in the brain and makes us foggy. A detector fires dopamine when we start a new task, waking us back up and making us feel warm and fuzzy.

“The dopamine rewards circuit is what’s responsible for people getting addicted to cocaine and heroin,” said McGill, in a Paper Mag interview. “So, the idea is people are going to be resistant because it feels like they are multitasking, and it feels good. But multitasking doesn’t work – people get less done.

“They think they are getting more done but their judgment is off. Not only do they get less done but their work is less creative.”

Big Repercussions

Science has proven multitaskers aren’t just bad at completing more than one task at once: they’re less efficient when it comes to singular tasks as well. When late Stanford University professor Clifford Nass kicked off a research study into multitasking in 2009, he expected those who frequently attended to multiple tasks at once would outperform their peers. What he found was the complete opposite. Not only did the multitaskers perform poorly when given concurrent tasks, they lagged behind when they attempted to do one thing at a time as well.

“One would think that if people were bad at multitasking, they would stop. However, when we talk with the multitaskers, they seem to think they’re great at it and seem totally unfazed and totally able to do more and more and more,” said Nass, in a 2009 PBS interview. “…We worry that it may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly.”

Someone who is multitasking and faces interruption takes about 50 percent longer to complete their task of priority. During that time, 50 percent more errors are made. A University of London study found multitasking with electronic media kills your IQ more than a sleepless night or smoking marijuana.

Knowing this, it is hard to believe any of us would have the time or desire to multitask.

Mono, Not Multi

Many productivity coaches will tell you monotasking is the new multitasking. You may not be ready to embrace the concept wholeheartedly off the bat but we should all try to ease ourselves into a work flow where we focus on one thing at a time.

If you’re easily distracted by the non-stop deluge of notifications on your phone, mute it and stash it out of sight. Prioritize tasks, create lists, schedule your workday and then force yourself to stick to it. Work with your attention span, not against it, by organizing assignments in 15 or 20 minute blocks.

Try it for a week to see if it changes your day for the better. Adopting new practices may be unpleasant at first but can pay big dividends in the long run.