> They asked student volunteers whether they used cellphones while driving, and whether they were good at multitasking. Then they tested the students' multitasking ability by asking them to solve math problems while remembering random strings of letters.
> They found that the people who multitasked the most in real life — the impulsive risk-takers — were actually much worse at juggling tasks than people who rarely drove while phoning.
> Even worse, these demon multitaskers thought they were terrific at it, though the cold, hard data proved they weren't.
So a possible upshot is that it's possible that you can be more efficient when multi-tasking. It's just that the kinds of people who multi-task are often the kind of people who shouldn't be doing it (and thus bring down the efficiency scores of those who are able to hack it).
> They asked student volunteers whether they used cellphones while driving, and whether they were good at multitasking. Then they tested the students' multitasking ability by asking them to solve math problems while remembering random strings of letters.
> They found that the people who multitasked the most in real life — the impulsive risk-takers — were actually much worse at juggling tasks than people who rarely drove while phoning.
> Even worse, these demon multitaskers thought they were terrific at it, though the cold, hard data proved they weren't.
So a possible upshot is that it's possible that you can be more efficient when multi-tasking. It's just that the kinds of people who multi-task are often the kind of people who shouldn't be doing it (and thus bring down the efficiency scores of those who are able to hack it).