Multitasking: productivity scourge or boon?

You’re on a conference call, while scanning your email inbox, someone walks in for your signature on a document, a Skype chat pops up on your screen, and all the while, in the back of your mind, you are planning strategy about an upcoming meeting. If this sounds familiar you’re not alone – almost every manager, at companies large and small, does it every day.

It seems we’re all hyper-busy at work these days, often juggling multiple activities at the same time and struggling to focus on any of them. However, this observation seems to run counter to one of the fundamental argument of economics: that worker specialisation has increased over time and delivers increased efficiency and thereby increased productivity.

Henry Ford’s production line, the industrial-age equivalent of Adam Smith’s pin factory, is the classic example. Everyone had a single, specific job, and when all hands came together, more could be produced in less time because of this single-minded specialisation of every worker.

Why do we seem to observe the opposite in modern workplaces? And is Smith’s and Ford’s implicit assumption true – that switching between tasks means wasting time? Many office workers will tell you that by not being specialised, we seem to be more efficient. Who is correct?

One clear reason for modern freneticism is the availability of personal, mobile technology. It is now cheap enough that everyone has access to an internet enabled mobile device, meaning multiple active connections to the rest of the world are continuously “on”. Like having a baby on your hip, the mobile in your pocket provides a constant presence of the rest of humanity, and hence more or less constant interaction, unless one actively withdraws.