Tareas múltiples afectan la productividad

Científicos han descubierto que el realizar varias tareas a la vez no lo hace más eficiente.

Multitasking harmful to productivity

Scientists have found focussing on multiple media sources, such as email, phone, the internet, and television, all at once does not make you more efficient. In fact, multitaskers find it harder to concentrate.

Reporter:
Jon Stewart

clic Listen to the story

Researchers at Stanford University in the United States divided a group of over 250 students into light or heavy media multitaskers. Light multitaskers focus on just one or two sources at a time - listening to music while working for example. Heavy multitaskers watch online videos, surf the web, talk or text on their mobiles, and write or read, all at the same time. Lead researcher Cliff Nass wanted to see how this would affect the way their brains work.

Clifford Nass: "You would think that people who are multitasking with all these media at once would be great at ignoring irrelevant information. However we discovered they are suckers for irrelevant information, so they're much worse than low multitaskers at ignoring the irrelevant."

Not only that, but multitaskers are worse at organising and sorting information, and worse at switching from one task to another. The findings have left the scientists with something of a mystery - why do people multitask at all? They say that in an increasingly demanding work environment, expecting staff to be constantly available by email and instant message whilst doing their jobs may actually mean that productivity falls.

Jon Stewart, BBC News

clic Listen to the words

media multitaskers
los que utilizan varios medios a la vez

focus
se concentran

surf the web
navegan la red

ignoring
ignorar, descartar

suckers for
en este caso, es gente que no puede resistir

irrevelant information
datos irrelevantes, imformación sin importancia

switching from one task to another
(no saben) cambiar de una tarea a otra

increasingly demanding work environment
ambiente de trabajo cada vez más exigente

instant message
mensaje instantáneo

productivity falls
la productividad disminuye