Our days at work are often filled with a series of tasks that complete for our attention including e-mail, phone calls, cell phones, and instant messaging.  Not surprisingly, recent data indicate that people working at computers change tpiawindows or check their e-mail almost 37 times an hour. Indeed, there are growing concerns about how this may impact brain functioning as well as increase work stress levels.

A related issue is whether this is a productive way to work. Fortunately, psychologists have started turning their attention to this question. Researchers at Stanford University compared individuals who were heavy vs. light multi-taskers. From the outset, my expectations were that people who multi-task often would become quite adept at working in this fashion. To the contrary, it was found that frequent multi-taskers were more easily distracted by irrelevant stimuli and actually did worse at multi-tasking than were their peers who did it less often.

If you are curious about your own abilities to attend and multi-task, here are samples of the tools used in the study to assess attention and ability to shift between tasks. 

Reid Klion