The myth of multitasking

Jefferson Breland

(6/2022) Last month, I wrote about the importance of choice with regard to food, emotions and our health. When I began writing that article the subject was going to be about multitasking. I got distracted by one of the details of the multitasking article which led to the article about choice

Well, I still have multitasking on my mind… and juggling. Yes, juggling.

In my treatment room I have a set of three juggling balls. They are made of colorful leather. They are padded so they don’t bounce and roll and break things when I inevitably make a mistake. I put them in my treatment room to entertain myself when I have a gap between patients.

I was contemplating dusting the shelf the juggling balls were resting on when it occurred to me that juggling might be a great metaphor for multitasking.

Many people I know claim that they are great at multitasking; more specifically, they claim that women are better at multitasking than men. Most of these people are women and mothers. Their claim makes perfect sense given the enormous challenges of being a mother and having to do a gazillion things at once. Multitasking is a requirement in many of our jobs.

So, what is multitasking? It seems obvious, and I like to not make assumptions, so I looked it up. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, multitasking is: a) the performance of more than one task at the same time b) the execution by a computer of more than one program or task simultaneously.

The computer definition is interesting. I am guessing that the computer processor alternates between tasks at ultra-high speeds thereby creating the illusion that the tasks or programs are occurring simultaneously.

So next I looked up juggling. It was interesting to find that most articles talked of juggling as a great way of increasing ones capacity to focus and get exercise. Scientific articles claim that juggling increases the brain’s grey matter and its neural connectivity. Another article claimed that one needed to stop thinking and become a kind of robot.

In my own experience of juggling, I have noted that you have to focus and not focus at the same time. One must pay attention to all of the balls at the same time. If one pays too much attention to one ball, the other balls seem to develop a mind of their own and go in every which direction.

So how does this relate to multitasking? When we have many tasks on our to-do lists, we use phrases such as "I have a lot of things on my plate," "I have a lot of irons in the fire," "I bit off more than I can chew," and finally, "I have a lot of balls in the air."

There are many, many scientific research papers on multitasking. The general consensus is that multitasking is not easy. There are many factors to consider in determining the effectiveness of one’s ability. Generally speaking, multitasking decreases productivity and leads to mistakes.

According to one study, neuroscientists discovered when you focus on completing one task both sides of your brain work in harmony. If one is asked to perform two tasks simultaneously, the brain splits in half resulting in forgotten details and three times the number of mistakes in the given tasks.

Imagine increasing the number of tasks to three, four, or five. How many mistakes would be made? How many details forgotten?

Our body as a whole appears to be a multitasking machine. Our "body" appears to do all the things it needs to do to live simultaneously.

Upon closer examination, nothing could be further from the truth. Our body is a perfect example of doing one thing at a time. It is a collective, a biological commune where each of our body’s systems: respiratory, circulatory, nervous, digestive, endocrine, immune, muscular, lymphatic, urinary, skeletal, reproductive, etc. does only its own specific task. Not only that, each of the approximately 37.2 billion cells in our body which make up those systems do only their own thing, their unique task. What looks like massive multitasking in our body is actually billions and billions of brilliantly coordinated single actions.

A lung cell doesn’t try to do the work of a stomach cell. They each have their own purpose and consciousness. A liver cell can only be a liver cell.

My take away is our brains perform more effectively when we give our full attention to the task at hand. (Yea, I know, I’m a bloody genius.) So what does this all have to do with our health?

Our bodies are a reflection of our general state of being on the body, mind, and spirit levels. If we extend the discovery in the aforementioned research paper that states when we focus on completing one task and both sides of our brain work in harmony to the whole body, each cell can then work in harmony. When our brains send clear signals to the body, our bodies respond with clarity as well.

If our emotions and thoughts are jumbled, our brain will send jumbled signals in the form of neurotransmitters to the body and quite literally, these mixed messages will confuse the systems of the body and symptoms will start to appear.

In the process of writing this article I have shifted my thinking about the comparison of juggling and multitasking. I now believe multitasking is more akin to juggling poorly. By juggling poorly, I mean we don’t keep the balls moving smoothly and continuously from our hands into the air. If our mind wanders whilst juggling, which often happens when we "multitask," that is when we drop a ball.

Juggling is a singular action. It is not about separate actions of throwing and catching. It is not about the number of balls. Juggling is about the seamless coordination of the specific tasks of each part of our body. Our focus needs to remain on keeping the balls moving in the desired pattern. We need all the parts of our brain to contribute to the action of juggling without any particular part of the brain dominating the process.

Back to the question, "How does this relate to our health?"

When we focus on one task in life, we give ourselves the opportunity to synchronize all parts of our brain. We give ourselves the opportunity to focus on the present moment. When we focus on the present moment we have the opportunity to be more peaceful. When we are peaceful in our mind we have the opportunity to be peaceful in our body. When we are peaceful in our body we have the opportunity for the body to begin to balance itself. When our bodies are balanced, health is the natural result because we allow the body to do what it is designed to do: to heal itself.

Jefferson Breland is a board-certified acupuncturists licensed in Pennsylvania and Maryland with offices in Gettysburg and Towson, respectively. He can be reached at 410-336-5876.