Multi-tasking might not be a bad idea

We all know the feeling. You're in a noisy office trying to concentrate. Your computer screen shows you have eight different websites open, along with two email accounts, three documents, a spreadsheet, two pdfs and at least one social networking site. You seem to be working on at least five different things and just as you get into one of them, you get an email or message about another and you move onto that instead. You have been at your computer for hours, but it doesn't feel as though you're getting anything finished.

And it's not just at work where the trend for multi-tasking is increasing. In 2014 it was found that 99% of adults use two forms of media simultaneously at some point every week. On average people do this for two hours and three minutes each day. The most popular combination is watching TV at the same time as chatting on the phone.

We could decide not to check our email so frequently or to turn off alerts, but in general we tend not to. Doing two things at once makes us feel as though we've somehow saving time, yet there's still a nagging feeling that finishing one job before starting another might be more efficient.

Read the full article here.