Why You Should Stop Multitasking by Megan and Taylor Maiers

Often times, people will state that they are good at multitasking. They may say they can read and listen to music or text someone while having a conversation with someone else. Although some people may believe that they are skilled at multitasking, this habit is actually detrimental to one’s mental health and may, in reality, be quite impossible.

Those who claim that they can multitask are actually switching from one task to another, which is not the purpose. Listening to music while reading can cause someone to listen to the music for a short period of time and then switch back to reading so quickly that they may not even notice it.

Though you may think listening to music while completing a task or leaving the television on as background while working is helpful, it is proven to distract you from fully concentrating on the task. Your brain has to switch back and forth, which can tire you and cause you to actually be worse at completing a task with efficiency, compared to another person that does not multitask.

Also, your mental health may be damaged because it is taxing to have to switch back and forth constantly, wasting time in the milliseconds of transitioning and using energy in the process. The milliseconds may not seem so long, but they add up over time. The energy and time spent with this “multitasking” can create stress, as you may be more mentally tired or may not complete projects as quickly as you could have without the other distractions.

Even if multitasking can be achieved in simpler tasks, it may affect the quality of the tasks. While someone is doing something such as writing a paper, they may not focus on the paper and instead are busy doing something else at the same time. This can lead to decreased quality of the end product due to lack of concentration.

Overall, multitasking may be impossible with larger tasks; it could be damaging your mental health or decreasing the quality of the final product.