Why we don't juggle as well as we think

A growing body of studies suggests that juggling several activities at once may be less valuable than many people assume.

The reason, researchers say, is that the brain can effectively perform only one difficult task at a time. A Michigan professor found that when someone tried to multitask, important neural regions must switch back and forth, taking time and creating inefficiencies.

UCLA researchers used brain imaging to show that multitaskers were less effective learners. According to that research, a person focused on a single task remembers what he has learned using the hippocampus, a part of the brain critical to storing and recalling information.

But when that person multitasks — like trying to learn something new while driving — the brain relies more on the striatum, a part of the brain used more for learning motor skills.

The researchers concluded, “Don’t multitask while you are trying to learn something new you hope to remember.”

“The brain is fundamentally built to unitask,” says Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford.

And here's another sobering thought. Research shows that the brains of heavy multitaskers can become so accustomed to hopping from task to task that they have trouble focusing on longer, more in-depth ones.

Farewell email?

In 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported that email's reign was over. Long live Twitter and Facebook.

The paper wrote this "promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate — in ways we can only begin to imagine." There's usually several reasons behind a technology shift, but the article suggested the "always-on connection" crhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifeated a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster and more fun than email.

We've all seen the transformation since.

Fun and immediacy are great, but have we lost a sense of proportion and context? Sheer speed can overwhelm us with information, and demand hasty reaction or response. We may also lose some personal touch when we don't use email.

It always seems to come down to moderation. Everything has a place, but there's no one solution.

For effective solutioning, you gotta orientate

The challenge, at the end of the day, is to ensure we have the bandwidth to optimize.

We all suffer through poorly written communication, which only demonstrates the author has fallen in love with bizspeak, where perfectly useful words have been misappropriated for a new use.

How does this descent into indecipherable acronyms and meaningless jargon happen?

Experts suggest it’s because every company has both its own culture and its own language. We all move so fast that it’s more efficient to develop corporate shorthand. These short-hand references are meaningless to the outside world, but well understood within the corporate micro-culture.

That works to a point, but the rationale doesn’t work for the awful jargon. Whatever the rationale, it impedes effective communication. And if we don’t each make an effort to get back to basic English, we’ll be doomed to read pronouncements such as: "It's all a matter of the specifics of who you're looking at and what you're talking to depending on where you are in the world."