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Chunking describes how human memory utilization works. It is important to remember this concept as we look at doing several tasks "simultaneously." We are in fact switching between them rather than doing them at the same time.

Multitasking was once heralded as a fantastic way to maximize one’s time and get more done in a day. Then people started realizing that when they had a phone in their ear and were making calculations at the same time, their speed and accuracy (not to mention sanity) suffered. Rather than multitasking, try a new strategy known as “chunking.”

Don't waste so much of your time trying to multi-task. Instead, make yourself more efficient and more productive by chunking. Set aside chunks of time for specific tasks Reduce the time spent in start-up moments Don't allow interruptions Increase the number and size of chunks during your day and week Recognize that there will still be interruptions no matter how well you chunk.

He said our brains are not actually physically capable of handling multiple active tasks at the same time. Active tasks require attention. He said there are two types of multitasking: switch-tasking and background-tasking.

“Background tasking is where something mindless or mundane is happening in the background, that would be like running on the treadmill while you’re watching TV,” Crenshaw said. “That’s not really multitasking.”

He said in contrast, switch-tasking involves more active tasks like driving while talking on the cell phone or surfing the Internet while listening to a lecture. When we do two active tasks simultaneously, Crenshaw said, our brain under-performs because it is actually switching rapidly between tasks. Crenshaw said every switch incurs a switching cost, which equals lost time and effort

Even if you learn while multi-tasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.

"Our results suggest that learning facts and concepts will be worse if you learn them while you're distracted,

In every test, students who spent less time simultaneously reading e-mail, surfing the web, talking on the phone and watching TV performed best.

college students who routinely juggle many flows of information, bouncing from e-mail to web text to video to chat to phone calls, fared significantly worse than their low-multitasking peers

The process of switching back immediately to a task you've just performed, as many multitaskers try to do, takes longer than switching after a bit more time has passed, say findings published last fall by researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health. The reason is that the brain has to overcome "inhibitions" it imposed on itself to stop doing the first task in the first place; it takes time, in effect, to take off the brakes. If you wait several seconds longer before switching tasks, the obstacles imposed by that shutting-off process are reduced.Managing two mental tasks at once reduces the brainpower available for either task, according to a study published in the journal NeuroImage. Marcel Just of Carnegie Mellon University asked subjects to listen to sentences while comparing two rotating objects. Even though these activities engage two different parts of the brain, the resources available for processing visual input dropped 29% if the subject was trying to listen at the same time. The brain activation for listening dropped 53% if the person was trying to process visual input at the same time."It doesn't mean you can't do several things at the same time," says Dr. Just, co-director of the university's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging. "But we're kidding ourselves if we think we can do so without cost."

Multitasking, when it comes to paying attention, is a myth. The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time. At first that might sound confusing; at one level the brain does multitask. You can walk and talk at the same time. Your brain controls your heartbeat while you read a book. A pianist can play a piece with left hand and right hand simultaneously. Surely this is multitasking. But I am talking about the brain’s ability to pay attention… To put it bluntly, research shows that we can’t multitask. We are biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously.

When most people refer to multitasking they mean simultaneously performing two or more things that require mental effort and attention. Examples would include saying we’re spending time with family while were researching stocks online, attempting to listen to a CD and answering email at the same time, or pretending to listen to an employee while we are crunching the numbers.

So there’s no such thing as multitasking. Just task switching – or at best, background tasking, in which one activity consumes our attention while we’re mindlessly performing another.

"Heavy multitaskers are lousy at multitasking... The more you do it, the worse you get," said Stanford communications professor Clifford Nass.

Compulsive media multitaskers are worse at focusing their attention, worse at organizing information, and worse at quickly switching between tasks, the Stanford scientists wrote.

After testing about 100 Stanford students, the scientists concluded that chronic media multitaskers have difficulty focusing and are not able to ignore irrelevant information.

keeping up several e-mail and instant message conversations at once, text messaging while watching television and jumping from one website to another while plowing through homework assignments.

the researchers realized those heavy media multitaskers are paying a big mental price

Everything distracts them

We find that students engage in substantial multitasking behavior with their laptops and have non course-related software applications open and active about 42% of the time.

Although many students may believe they can switch back and forth between different tasks with no serious consequences to their academic performance, multitasking has been shown to dramaticaUy increase the number of memory errors and the processing time required to "learn" topics that involve a significant cognitive load

Although many students may believe they can switch back and forth between different tasks with no serious consequences to their academic performance,