Brain on computers slows down production, hampers creativity due to multitasking Health Consultant

Brain on computers slows down production, hampers creativity due to multitasking

Meanwhile the recent edition of the “McKinsey Quarterly” advises executives worldwide to “stop multitasking.” The recent edition cites various studies showing how multitasking “slows down production, hampers creativity, makes people anxious and can be addictive.” This subject of multitasking is also based on a recent New York Times story about reporter, Matt Richtel, whose been writing about the effects of heavy technology use on the brain and how “it harms one’s health.”

Richtel also noted: “It figures that I’d suffer some of them myself,” when reporting this subject over the past few years.

McKinsey Quarterly is a publication from the famed worldwide consulting firm the “McKinsey Global Institute “(MGI), established in 1990 “to help leaders in the commercial, public, and social sectors develop a deeper understanding of the evolution of the global economy and to provide a fact base that contributes to decision making on critical management and policy issues.”

The company’s web site also notes that “MGI research combines two disciplines: economics and management. Economists often have limited access to the practical problems facing senior managers, while senior managers often lack the time and incentive to look beyond their own industry to the larger issues of the global economy.”

For nearly two decades, MGI has utilized this “micro-to-macro” approach in research covering more than 20 countries and 30 industry sectors.

MGI’s current research agenda focuses on three broad areas: productivity, competitiveness, and growth; the evolution of global financial markets; and the economic impact of technology. Recent research has examined Africa’s economic potential; debt and deleveraging; the impact of multinational companies on the US economy; technology-enabled business trends; urbanization in India and China; and the competitiveness of sectors and industrial policy.

In turn, Richtel writes that if McKinsey is telling world business leaders to “stop multitasking,” that one should take notice.

By having one’s brain “always on,” Richtel writes that “multitasking work environments are killing productivity, dampening creativity, and making us unhappy,” the article begins. It goes on to say that ‘these scourges hit CEO’s and others in the C-suite particularly hard’ because senior executives need time and focus to synthesize lots of information, and make good judgments.”

At the same time, the MIG think tank of the world’s leading computer minds, note that for all the benefits of “the information technology and communications revolution, it has a well-known dark side: information overload and its close cousin, attention fragmentation. These scourges hit CEOs and their colleagues in the C-suite particularly hard because senior executives so badly need uninterrupted time to synthesize information from many different sources, reflect on its implications for the organization, apply judgment, make trade-offs, and arrive at good decisions.”

MIG thinkers also note “the importance of reserving chunks of time for reflection, and the difficulty of doing so, have been themes in management writing for decades.”

“Many senior executives literally have two overlapping workdays: the one that is formally programmed in their diaries and the one ‘before, after, and in-between,’ when they disjointedly attempt to grab spare moments with their laptops or smart phones, multitasking in a vain effort to keep pace with the information flowing toward them.

In brief, multitasking and spending massive amounts of time on line, hurts one’s health.

MIG also points to “a body of scientific evidence demonstrates fairly conclusively that multitasking makes human beings less productive, less creative, and less able to make good decisions. If we want to be effective leaders, we need to stop.”

Virtual Health Center