Multitasking – does it work?

In Your Brain at Work, David Rock points out that the mistaken notion that the brain can handle seven pieces of information at once was replaced with the idea, also false, that the brain can easily handle four. According to Rock, one piece of information at a time is actually ideal. As he writes early in his book, "While the brain is exquisitely powerful, even the brain of a Harvard graduate can be turned into that of an eight-year-old simply by being made to do two things at once."

Douglas Merrill, in his article published at http://www.forbes.com/, "Why Multitasking Doesn't Work", shares about how trying to multitask during meetings actually is counterproductive. He writes about what happened when he was at Google and many in the meetings chose to work on their laptops while trying to participate in the meeting. Writes Merrill:

"Soon it became clear that many people were missing important stuff in meetings. They weren't paying attention to what was going on around...