TM1) How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking by Peter Bregman in Harvard Business Review

"Doing several things at once is a trick we play on ourselves, thinking we’re getting more done. In reality, our productivity goes down by as much as 40%."

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TM2) The Myth of Multitasking How intentional self-distraction hurts us

by Christine Rosen in the The New Atlantis

"In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.”

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TM3) Why the modern world is bad for your brain

by Daniel J. Levitin in the Guardian

"Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking. Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation."
 

"When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost in doing so.”

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"Asking the brain to shift attention from one activity to another causes the prefrontal cortex and striatum to burn up oxygenated glucose, the same fuel they need to stay on task. And the kind of rapid, continual shifting we do with multitasking causes the brain to burn through fuel so quickly that we feel exhausted and disoriented after even a short time. We’ve literally depleted the nutrients in our brain. This leads to compromises in both cognitive and physical performance."

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" Even though we think we’re getting a lot done, ironically, multitasking makes us demonstrably less efficient."

 

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TM4) Supertaskers: Profiles in extraordinary multitasking ability
by Jason M. Watson & David L. Strayer in Psychonomic Bulletin and Review

"...2.5% of the sample showed absolutely no performance decrements with respect to performing single and dual tasks. In single-task conditions, these “Supertaskers” scored in the top quartile on all dependent measures..."

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TM5) Multitasking: Switching costs: Subtle "switching" costs cut efficiency, raise risk

An article from the American Psychological Association (APA)

"...even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time."

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TM6) Why We're All Addicted to Texts, Twitter and Google

by Susan Weinschenk in Psychology Today

"Dopamine is also stimulated by unpredictability. When something happens that is not exactly predictable, that stimulates the dopamine system. Our emails, tweets, and texts show up, but you don't know exactly when they will, or who they will be from. It's unpredictable."

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"The dopamine system is most powerfully stimulated when the information coming in is small so that it doesn't fully satisfy. A short text or tweet (can only be 140 characters!) is ideally suited to send your dopamine system raging."

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TM7) How Long It Takes to Get Back on Track After a Distraction

by Kristin Wong in Lifehacker

​"In a study from the University of California Irvine, researchers shadowed workers on the job, studying their productivity... We found about 82 percent of all interrupted work is resumed on the same day. But here’s the bad news — it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task."

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TM8) Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule

by Paul Graham

​"In a study from the University of California Irvine, researchers shadowed workers on the job, studying their productivity... We found about 82 percent of all interrupted work is resumed on the same day. But here’s the bad news — it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task."

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TM9) How the world’s biggest four-day workweek trial run changed people’s lives
By Anna Cooban, CNN Business

"Gary Conroy, founder and CEO of 5 Squirrels, a skincare product manufacturer on England’s south coast, has brought in “deep work time” to ensure his employees remain productive....  For two hours every morning, and two hours every afternoon, Conroy’s staff ignores emails, calls or Teams messages and concentrates on their projects.

“The whole place goes like a library, and everybody just gets their head down and smashes through the work,” he said.

People spend most of their day on ‘busywork’ — or work for work’s sake — according to a survey of 10,600 workers by Asana last September. The software company found that the workers in the United States spend about 58% of their day on activities such as answering emails and attending meetings, rather than the work they were hired for.

Conroy said meetings at the company used to be a “talking shop,” but are now capped at 30 minutes, and only permitted in the two hours outside of ‘deep work time.’

The results have exceeded everyone’s expectations.

“[The team] started realizing that they were smashing projects that they had always put on the back burner,” Conroy said."

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