Find it difficult to do several things at once? First, the good news is you’re not alone – most people are terrible at task-switching. Secondly (and in even more good news), psychologists have been studying it for decades to figure out why.
In an ideal world, we’d focus on one task at a time – get it finished and, only then, move onto something else. Real life is rarely so convenient, however. It’s all too common for you to be making great progress on one thing, when… BAM! You suddenly need to deal with something else.
If you’re working from home, there might be even more tasks to switch between, from signing for deliveries to emptying the dishwasher.
When you do eventually return to the original task, it’s likely to take you a while to ease back into it and, at least at first, your performance will probably be poorer.
In the lab, researchers have shown that people are slower and make more errors when they switch back and forth between two tasks, compared with when they focus solely on one.
Giving people a break between the two tasks helps, which suggests that part of the difficulty of task switching is the need to mentally change gears. The break helps with that, but it’s not enough, implying there’s some lingering interference between the two tasks.
Psychologists call this problem “attentional residue” – essentially, when you switch between tasks, your mind struggles to fully let go of each one before moving onto the next.
Yet another factor has to do with memory – after switching tasks, you have to remember to return to what you were doing originally and where you were at.
Finally, there’s also an emotional element, especially when a task switch is forced on you by an interruption. A switch such as this causes frustration and stress, which can also harm your performance.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Lori Cohen, via email) 'Why do I find it so difficult to switch between tasks?'
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