In an ideal world, we’d focus on one task at a time – get it finished and, only then, move onto something else. Real life is rarely so convenient, however. It’s all too common for you to be making great progress on one thing, when… BAM! You suddenly need to deal with something else. If you’re working from home, there might be even more tasks to switch between, from signing for deliveries to emptying the dishwasher.
When you do eventually return to the original task, it’s likely to take you a while to ease back into it and, at least at first, your performance will probably be poorer.
In the lab, researchers have shown that people are slower and make more errors when they switch back and forth between two tasks, compared with when they focus solely on one.
Giving people a break between the two tasks helps, which suggests that part of the difficulty of task switching is the need to mentally change gears. The break helps with th...
When you do eventually return to the original task, it’s likely to take you a while to ease back into it and, at least at first, your performance will probably be poorer.
In the lab, researchers have shown that people are slower and make more errors when they switch back and forth between two tasks, compared with when they focus solely on one.
Giving people a break between the two tasks helps, which suggests that part of the difficulty of task switching is the need to mentally change gears. The break helps with th...
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BBC Science Focus (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2025