Is Multitasking Efficient?

Is it a smart strategy to work on several jobs at a time?

All of us multitask sometime or the other. Driving the car, speaking over the phone in between biting into your breakfast and listening to the ipod – this is a common scenario for most. And it gives us a high for being super efficient. But are we really saving on time?

When a computer multi-tasks, its Central Processing Unit or CPU switches from the current job and goes to the next job in the queue after putting the computing variables on a stack. When it does multiple jobs, computer’s memory resources are shared. Hence, with limited resources or a specially difficult computation, the CPU may be spending more time switching than doing the jobs efficiently, with the result the system “hangs” and the user feels the computer unresponsive.

It is important to remember the CPU does only one job at any specific time. It is only the extreme speed of the CPU, which takes only milliseconds to switch between the tasks, that gives the user the illusion of simultaneous execution of jobs.

Similarly, the human cerebral cortex can pay attention to only one thing at a time. Just like a computer, it allocates the mind’s resources and prioritizes between tasks. And just like a computer, people ignore the present job for shifting their attention to the next. If the next job is merely listening to a background music, they don’t realize the interruption, because they shift back to the job in quick succession.

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