Management, and HR especially, often have a bad reaction towards new online technologies like social networking, SMS, blogging, online chat (MSN) and so on.

Online engagement tools appear to take up a lot of time, and cause staff to lose focus as they rapidly switch from one task to another.

But all is not lost. Maybe it’s just a matter of acquiring the skills necessary to do more than one thing at a time ie. multi-tasking. If this is true then we can get better at this, and social networking can be redeemed.

Multitasking Masters

Multitasking is not an innate ability and it can be improved through practice. This is according to research funded by the National Institute of Mental Health in the US. Apparently, we can increase our ability to process multiple streams of information. This appears to contradict the current thinking in mainstream society, where multi-tasking is seen as something that some people either do well naturally, or just don’t.

The key to success is to improve the speed at which the pre-frontal cortex processes information, and this can be dramatically increased through training and practice. This is according to Doctors, Paul E. Dux, M. Tombu, BP Rogers, S. Harrison, F. Tong, and R. Marois, the co-authors of the study.

After training, our brains working faster for each individual task, and there is more available cognitive resources to tackle other processing tasks. The good news is that it is not necessary to have any knowledge of the structure of the brain for this to work. You don’t have to be a cognitive scientist to get better at multi-tasking.  All you have to do is multi-task more often, and more intensely.

Eventually we just get better.

What the researchers did was to train 7 people for two weeks to select a finger response to an image, and select a vocal response to different sounds. Sometimes the tasks were done together, sometimes they were done alone. What was interesting about the study is that the researcher did fMRI scans of the subjects during the research ie. while they were responding to the stimuli.

What they found was that over time the subjects got better at doing the two task individually, but they also got better at doing them together. This makes sense if you think back to when you learned to ride a bike or drive a car.

What they also found is that our brains do not really do two things at the same time, ever. Multi-tasking is an illusion created by the speed of operation of each individual task, and the blending of one task into another task.

So the answer to multi-tasking?  JUST DO IT! Do it over and over, again and again.

(This post was completed at a morning HR seminar alongside lunch, 2 cups of coffee, 3 SMS conversations, three face-to-face conversations, a read of today’s news on Google, and a casual client meeting. And all with no spelling mistaks. Multitasking is eezy for those of us who practise allot. )