Modern life is relentless. The sheer quantity of information we deal with on a daily basis far outweighs anything previous generations have faced, according to Daniel J Levitin, author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight
in the Age of Information Overload. “Just trying to keep
our own media and electronic files organised can be overwhelming,” Levitin wrote. “Each of us has the equivalent of over half a million books stored on our computers, not to mention all the information stored in our cell phones or in the magnetic stripe on the back of our credit cards. We have created a world with 300 exabytes (300,000,000,000,000,000,000 pieces) of human-made information.”
“In 2011, Americans took in five times the information every day that they did in 1986 – the equivalent of 175 newspapers,” Levitin added. “During our leisure time, each of us processes 34GB or 100,000 words every day.”
And while your daily data diet might just squeeze onto the storage of a smartphone, your brain’s “processor” is
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Multitasking
nowhere near as powerful as the one inside a Samsung Galaxy S6. “The processing capacity of the conscious mind has been estimated at 120 bits per second,” Levitin claimed, citing two estimates made of the brain’s capacity by psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Bell Labs engineer Robert Lucky, who arrived at independent figures within an order of magnitude of one another.
You don’t need a calculator to realise that this doesn’t give the brain anywhere near enough “bandwidth” to cope with the 34GB of leisure data Levitin claims we processed earlier. But even if the stats have the whiff of manure, there’s a ring of truth to Levitin’s claims that we struggle to cope with the modern-day data onslaught.
“Our brains do have the ability to process the information we take in, but at a cost,” he wrote. “We can have trouble separating the trivial from the important, and all this information processing makes us tired. Neurons are living cells with a metabolism; they need oxygen and glucose to survive, and when they’ve been working hard, we experience fatigue. Every status update you read on Facebook, every tweet or text message you receive from
a friend, is competing for resources in your brain with important things such as whether to put your savings in stocks or bonds, where you’ve left your passport, or how best to reconcile with a close friend you’ve just had an argument with.”
Levitin suggests that instead we should focus on one job at the time and not strive for the mythical productivity of the multitasker. “We need to blinker ourselves, to better monitor our attentional focus,” he said in an interview with The Guardian. “Enforced periods of no email or internet to allow us to sustain concentration have been shown to be tremendously helpful. Also, prioritising tasks is very important. So many of us find that while we’re working on one task, a nagging voice pops up in our heads saying we should be doing something else. If you explicitly prioritise your to-do list, you know that whatever you’re working on now is the most important thing you should be doing.”
■Bombarding the brain
Levitin is by no means a lone crank with a book to sell. There have been several academic studies that highlight the detrimental effects of multitasking. A 2009 study at Stanford University split 100 students into two groups: those who regularly multitask with different media (email, instant messaging and so on) and those who don’t.
EverystatusupdateyoureadonFacebook,every
tweetortextmessageyougetfromafriend,is
competingforresourcesinyourbrain
In one test, the students were shown sets of two red rectangles, either on their own or surrounded by varying numbers of blue rectangles. Each configuration was flashed twice, with participants having to determine whether the two red rectangles in the second frame had shifted position from those in the first. Even though they had been told to ignore the irrelevant blue rectangles, the multitaskers struggled to do so, scoring more poorly than the students who weren’t avid do-it-alls. “They’re suckers for irrelevancy,” said communication professor Clifford Nass of the multitaskers. “Everything distracts them.”
Indeed, the multitaskers performed worse in each of the three tests set during the Stanford study. “When they’re in situations where there are multiple sources of information coming from the external world or emerging out of memory, they’re not able to filter out what isn’t relevant to their current goal,” said Anthony Wagner, an associate professor of psychology at Stanford. “That failure to filter means they’re slowed down by that irrelevant information.”
Last year’s Human Era At Work study, conducted by The Energy Project and Harvard
Business Review, found that fewer than one
in five employees felt they had the ability to focus on one thing at a time. That “problem” is particularly apparent in hi-tech firms: a study conducted by Gloria Mark from the Department of Informatics at the University of California found that tech workers spent on average just 11 minutes on any given project and only three minutes per task.
“Surprisingly, our results show that interrupted work is performed faster,” the research paper claimed. “We offer an interpretation. When people are constantly interrupted, they develop a mode of working faster (and writing less) to compensate for the time they know they’ll lose by being interrupted. Yet working faster with interruptions has a cost: people in the interrupted conditions experienced a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time pressure and effort. So interrupted work may be completed faster, but it’s at a price.”
That price might even be a temporary loss of intelligence. A 2005 study conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London and sponsored by HP – a firm that has reason to espouse the gains of new technology, not lambast it – found that workers distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a ten-point drop in their IQ. That’s twice the impact of smoking marijuana, according to the Institute.
■Brain training
There’s even evidence to suggest that
multitasking could have a long-lasting impact. Last year, researchers from the University of Sussex used MRI to scan the brains of 75 adults. Those who claimed to regularly multitask using smartphones, PCs and televisions were found to have smaller grey-matter density in the anterior
cingulate cortex, the region of the brain responsible for cognitive and emotional
functions. The researchers were at pains to stress that their research revealed a link, not causality: it isn’t clear if multitasking changes the brain’s structure or if those with less dense grey matter are simply more attracted to multitasking.
Neuroscientist Kep Kee Loh, one of the joint authors of the study, believes that “both perspectives are equally likely”, but also points out that the internet makes a natural habitat for multitasking. “Increased engagements in these behaviours over time would definitely alter our cognitive mechanisms, since our brain structures are highly plastic to training and experiences.”
So could the human brain evolve to cope better with multitasking in the future, we asked? “I believe that the human brain will evolve to
cope with the demands imposed by this new environment. The big question is how.”
Other experts are similarly convinced that the brain can be reshaped, and even trained, to better handle multitasking. “When we engage in more than one act that commands attention, there’s competition between them for resources – and there’s a cost,” said Dr Adam Gazzaley, who founded his own cognitive neuroscience research lab at the University of California. “They compete with one another. We don’t have a high-level ability to cross-process tasks.”
He spoke to PC Pro on his way to a talk he was giving at a health conference in London, where he was explaining how video games can be used to train people to better handle multitasking. “We challenge different neural processes using games mechanics,” he said. “The fundamental concept of plasticity is that the brain has the ability to change at every level.”
Gazzaley believes companies may one day send their staff for brain training, so that