NYT Says Multitasking No Good for Productivity. I Say Bull.

Multitasking is a good thing, right? After all, the very term suggests accomplishing at least two tasks at the same time, which must be a boon to productivity.

Not so, according to the New York Times Freakonomics blog. "The Myth of Multitasking" reports on a newly published paper that finds "task juggling" detrimental to productivity, not advantageous. Here's an excerpt:

[The paper] analyzes a sample of Italian judges with different caseloads and finds that "task juggling, i.e., the spreading of effort across too many active projects, decreases the performance of workers, raising the chances of low throughput, long duration of projects and exploding backlogs."

All together, now: Duh! I don't even know where to start with this, but I'll go with the obvious first: one study focused on a very specific kind of worker does not amount to a "myth of multitasking." Maybe Judge Guiseppe is better off focusing on one case at a time, but that doesn't mean other professionals in other environments should do likewise.

I, for one, would be lost without multitasking. I'll often respond to e-mail while waiting for a program to finish installing, tweak a blog post while on a conference call (that's right, I said it), or even just straighten my desk while my computer is booting.

That's a very different kind of multitasking, obviously, but let's not lump all workers together and say multitasking is bad, okay? On the other hand, if you frequently feel like you're getting pulled in too many directions, by all means, pick a single task and focus on that alone until it's done.

Does multitasking have value in your line of work? Tell me how in the comments.

More on BNET:

• Supercharge Your Day with Deliberate Productivity Planning
• 3 Reasons Multitasking is Still a Valuable Business Skill
• Improve Your Productivity by Giving Up Multitasking