The Myth of Multitasking

What do you think when you have momentary memory issues? You know, when a thought is ‘on the tip of your tongue’ but evaporates mid sentence? Do you attribute this lapse to your age or the start of failing capacity? Well, take a breath, step on the brakes and consider what else might be going on. What causes the brain to falter in such instances? I used to assume that a momentary lapse in my memory was due to mental diminishing, especially with my ADHD. And certainly aging comes with irritating memory lapses. This experience is an endless source of jokes and memes. ‘I came in here for something…what was it?’ Or “Oh, you know who that is, it’s …” Why can’t I think of it! Well before concluding it’s a sign of ‘losing it’ consider another possibility. Certainly moving into old age affects memory, but these momentary lapses happen throughout the age span. And it’s often the result of simple distractions like voices, sounds or visual distractions. I shared this because it reveals a common assumption we make. We expect to recall at will something we know is stored in our brains, ready to be retrieved. And we assume to manage distractions because we can ‘multitask’, managing multiple thoughts and ideas simultaneously. It is is a common assumption. Well it turns out that multitasking is actually a myth. What we often call ‘multitasking’ is actually simply ‘switching’. We switch our thoughts and focus between different ideas or tasks trying to navigate competing stimuli. Research at Stanford has clarified that the human brain is actually incapable of “multitasking”. What we are doing in these moments is ‘thought switching’. Now this is not to say that as people get older, thinking does become limited. But in many instances, the loss of a thought might probably be attributed to distraction and thought switching. So relax, slowdown and switch away.