Q&A: Dropping the Ball

Does multi-tasking actually make us less productive?

By Kathryn Tyler Jul 1, 2013
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English actress Helena Bonham Carter once said, "Multi-tasking? I can't even do two things at once. I can't even do one thing at once." She may have been joking, but she was closer to the truth than she realized.


Below, Strayer shares his insights.

What is multi-tasking?


Why do people do it?


What is the risk of multi-tasking?


Most of the time when people multi-task, they are not moving the business agenda ahead; they are updating their Facebook pages or checking baseball scores. It is not relevant to the company's bottom line. When people put away their phones—the source of a lot of multi-tasking behavior—studies show a huge increase in creativity scores.


Is multi-tasking ever a good thing?


What happens physically to people who multi-task?


How can HR professionals discourage employees from multi-tasking?

Since most multi-tasking has to do with technology, have some guidelines and policies in place regarding acceptable and unacceptable online behaviors. For instance, personal e-mail, Facebook, texting, social media, Internet surfing and other nonprofessional activities should be done on personal time. Discuss this with employees. Don't go Draconian and lock down some Internet capabilities, though, or you risk fostering animosity about Big Brother.

Should employers turn off music at work?

It depends. In some settings, such as hair salons or restaurants, background music is useful. But in an office where people are trying to carry on conversations or write, for example, if there is a lot of speech in the audio, music can be a real distraction.

Who are the best multi-taskers?

Good multi-taskers, if they exist, are quite rare—2 percent of the population, at best. We are studying these supertaskers, people like fighter pilots, court reporters and waitresses who don't write down the orders for 10 people and still don't mess them up. But these people are the exceptions. For the 98 percent of us who try to do two things at once rather than one, we compromise quality. People tend to overrate their abilities to multi-task the same way they think they are smarter or more attractive than they are.


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