What kills the brain quickly, free, without registration

We sincerely admire ourselves when, in an inexplicable burst of productivity, we manage to repeat the feat of the Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar and perform several tasks at the same time. However, the price of multitasking is quite high. Read about the harm it can cause to the brain in the article. What kills your brain quickly, for free and without registration What is going on in the heads of people who, considering themselves true gurus of multitasking, grab onto doing a whole bunch of things at once? It is difficult to say, but certainly something terrible, because our brain is simply physically incapable of doing everything at once. What is the danger of multitasking and what consequences can result from its abuse, we will consider below. Our brain is not adapted to multitasking! The brain is designed in such a way that it is most comfortable focusing on only one task at a time. When we throw a waterfall of information at it, the work only slows down, without producing the desired result. Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose research is focused on studying the mechanisms of memory, believes that trying to concentrate on several things leads to severe brain overload. When people think that they are doing several things at once, they are actually switching from one task to another very quickly. And each time they do this, certain cognitive resources are spent. Constantly switching attention from one thing to another has a detrimental effect on our productivity and cognitive functions, because during this process, glucose is actively used up, which the brain needs to maintain concentration. It is because the brain quickly runs out of fuel that we get so tired when working in multitasking mode. When we complete some small task (send an email, reply to someone's message, publish a tweet), we feed our brain a small dose of dopamine, the pleasure hormone. Our brain likes to get a reward, and therefore it encourages us to switch between mini-tasks, the performance of which gives a feeling of instant satisfaction. Quick feedback brings pleasure from switching, a person begins to depend on it, and this can be extremely dangerous. It is somewhat of a vicious circle. It seems to us that we are shoveling a ton of work and doing a lot of useful things, but in fact we are doing nothing at all (or doing very insignificant things that do not require much mental effort). Multitasking reduces the quality and efficiency of work! In multitasking mode, it becomes much more difficult to collect your thoughts and filter out irrelevant information, and this, in turn, affects the quality and efficiency of work. Research conducted by the University of London showed that the IQ of subjects who tried to take on several tasks at the same time significantly decreased. The decrease was almost comparable to the indicators of those people who did not sleep for 24 hours or smoked marijuana. Agree, this is a little scary. When your brain is multitasking, your stress hormone cortisol levels are constantly on the rise. This can be draining and make you feel mentally exhausted, even if your workday has just begun. Most of our problems with multitasking in the workplace are caused by email and incoming messages. Some studies have shown that even just wanting someone to respond can lower your IQ by 10 points. The anticipation of a new email or a notification blinking in the corner of your inbox is a constant distraction and keeps you stressed. Researchers at the McKinsey Global Institute have found that employees at large companies spend as much as 28% of their workweek just sorting through their inboxes! Email is certainly a huge distraction, but instant messaging is rightfully considered the real time killer, as it arrives at lightning speed and requires an equally immediate response. In order to somehow protect yourself from the harm that mail and instant messengers cause, try to make a schedule for checking them. For example, train yourself to check your mail twice a day (at lunch and before leaving work). Turn off notifications in all chats and set aside a special time when you will answer incoming messages. Men are worse at multitasking The IQ of men who are forced to do a bunch of things at the same time decreases by as much as 15 points. In most cases, this is comparable to the mental development of an 8-year-old child. So, if you suddenly began to feel an acute and unfounded love for obviously teenage music, think: maybe you are simply overworked? The consequences can be irreversible! During recent studies, it was suggested that the damage that multitasking causes to our brain is almost irreparable. Scientists from the University of Sussex (Brighton, England) studied MRI scans of people who have a habit of multitasking. For example, texting friends while watching a movie or checking email while talking on the phone. Those who are fans of multitasking have significantly less brain density in the front of the skull. And this is the area that is responsible for empathy and emotional control. The only significant downside to this study is that it is not yet entirely clear whether multitasking caused the brain change, or whether the changes themselves push people into a ton of things. Despite this ambiguous situation, it remains obvious that multitasking will not lead to anything good. The moral of all this is this: multitasking is clearly not a skill that is worth adding to your resume, it is better not to brag about it. Rather, it is a bad habit that should be stopped at the first opportunity. So turn off all notifications now, make a schedule for checking your email, and finally focus on one single task.