March 22, 2009Boston Globe
Juggling multiple tasks at work just compounds stress
By: Maggie Jackson
Read the full story below or view it at the Boston Globe web site.
Want to dial down on stress? Cut down on multitasking.
Scientists are learning that there's a costly catch-22 to the frantic juggling we do all day. In short, multitasking seems to beget stress, while stress in turn can impair multitasking.
Workers who are juggling interruptions are significantly more stressed and frustrated, according to research by Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California at Irvine. When Mark gave people a "job" answering e-mail, they experienced significantly more stress and frustration when frequently interrupted. The costs of working this way are steep, Mark points out.
"If you're continually interrupted and switching thoughts, it's hard to think deeply about anything," she observes.
At the same time, stressed people have a hard time shifting their attention from one task to another, according to a neuroimaging study led by Conor Liston, a medical student and doctoral candidate at Rockefeller University and Weill Medical College of Cornell University.
Working with stressed medical students preparing for a crucial exam, Liston and colleagues found that the students were slower in switching between computer-based tasks than other less-stressed adults. "You're still responding as if you were doing task 'a', even though you know you're supposed to be doing task 'b,' " said Liston, whose study was published in January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The good news? A month after the exam, the students' brains had recovered. "It's reassuring that for most people, the brain is plastic enough and resilient enough and will go back to normal," said Liston, who says he sometimes finds it hard to juggle tasks when he's stressed.
