Over the past 7 years or so we have witnessed the explosion and ubiquitous use of social tools which have for most of us changed both the way we handle our social lives and increasingly our working lives too. The traditional natural and easy divide between work and home has now become blurred as we often find ourselves constantly switched on and accessible to all – permanently. Switching off isn’t easy.
Yet there is increasing evidence that switching off is critical to our health and multitasking which is a result of being constantly accessible damages both our brains and work. As a recent article in Forbes notes:
“Research conducted at Stanford University found that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers also found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time…
…Researchers at the University of Sussex compared the amount of time people spend on multiple devices (such as texting while watching TV) to MRI scans of their brains. They found that high multitaskers had less brain density in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region responsible for empathy as well as cognitive and emotional control.”
I am giving my thoughts on this subject at the Workplace Trends Conference in London this week. Here’s a video of my presentation with audio track.