How To Overcome Multitasking Madness

You know that productivity rush you get when responding to Slack messages from colleagues, emailing your child’s teacher and placing an Amazon order—all while on a Zoom?

Not all multitasking is the same, of course: Folding laundry while watching TV isn’t a problem. Studying for an exam while listening to music and checking your social-media feed is.

As it turns out, media multitasking is making us less productive, not more, according to neuroscientists and others who are studying this. You might be checking stuff off your to-do list, but you might also be missing some of the more important things that go whizzing by.

Nonstop toggling between devices and apps slows our ability to process and retain information, decreases our ability to filter out extraneous information, shortens our attention span and causes us to make mistakes, neuroscientists say. The researchers say the glut of new technological distractions over the past decade means the consequences of bad multitasking are now more dire.

Fortunately, there are remedies for multitasking madness.

Walking and chewing gum

Attempting to do too many things at once causes a bottleneck in the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s control centre, according to brain researchers at the University of Helsinki. They conducted brain-imaging scans of young adults to see what was going on while the participants were asked to read or listen to two kinds of sentences: sensical (“This morning I ate a bowl of cereal.”) and nonsensical (“This morning I ate a bowl of shoes.”).

The participants were asked to identify which sentences made sense. They were also presented with written and spoken sentences at the same time. The participants’ ability to correctly identify sentences declined significantly when their attention was divided between the written and spoken sentences.

That original study was published in 2015 in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, and a follow-up published this month covered other ground and reaffirmed the initial findings.

Carl Marci, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who has researched media multitasking extensively, said the study, in which he had no involvement, provides evidence that the brain reaches a capacity limit as it tries to process two streams of information at once.

Dr. Marci first began studying media multitasking when he worked at market-research firm Nielsen as chief neuroscientist of its consumer-neuroscience division. In 2002,he saw American adults were spending up to 40 hours a week consuming media; now, they’re spending about 80 hours a week doing so.

“How do people spend the equivalent of two full-time jobs a week consuming media? It isn’t possible unless they’re doing two things at once,” said Dr. Marci, who dedicated a section of his new book, “Rewired: Protecting Your Brain in the Digital Age,” to the phenomenon.

Those at greatest risk are children, he said, who are spending more time on devices at ever-younger ages, which has the potential for disaster come the teenage years.

“The analogy often used when describing teens, that there’s too much gas and not enough brake, applies here,” Dr. Marci said.

Translation: There’s more available stimulation to the brain’s reward and emotion centres, but not enough friction that comes from good judgment. You get that from your prefrontal cortex, which isn’t developed until around age 25, he added.

Trouble at school and work

Numerous studies have found that learning suffers among young children even when TV is on in the background, and that grades decline when students are texting or using social media in class or when doing homework.

Adults aren’t immune to the detrimental effects of trying to do too much. We’re constantly distracted by notifications at work and families can’t seem to watch a TV show together without one or more members simultaneously scrolling social media.

These habits tend to carry over into all areas of life, Dr. Marci said, including driving, where divided attention can be fatal.

But are kids adapting to this world of multiple data streams? Will they become tomorrow’s mega-multitaskers? The answer appears to be no.

The Finnish researchers conducted another multitasking study on the recognition of nonsensical sentences. Performed a year later, this larger second study involved adolescents and young adults, who shared their daily media-multitasking habits. Those who reported the highest levels of media multitasking performed worse on the sentence-recognition tasks when they were distracted by music.

These heavy multitaskers showed higher prefrontal-cortex activity than mono-taskers. That doesn’t mean they were achieving more. They were exerting more brain effort to recognize the sentences in the presence of distraction.

“We feel we’re working harder,” Dr. Marci said. “But it doesn’t mean we’re working smarter.”

The upside? Those in the study who claimed to multitask less often were better able to tune out the distraction.

What you can do

Here are tips to help you stay on task and be less scattered.

Block out focus time. Set aside time to get a work or school project done and set your phone to Do Not Disturb. Close out of your email and other distracting programs on your computer and turn off notifications. Setting an alarm can help so you’re not watching the clock.

Set expectations. If your boss or co-workers frequently need to be in touch, let them know when you plan to be offline focusing on a project. Mark it on your calendar if you need to.

Leave your phone in another room. Whether you’re watching a movie with your family or doing homework, have your phone out of sight. Research has shown that just seeing your phone, even if it’s muted and the screen is obscured, can lead to distracting thoughts.

Teach good habits early. All of this applies to your kids, who will not only follow your lead, but will also seek any and all available distractions on their own. It’s good to set an example, as well as limit what they can and can’t do during, for instance, the homework hour.

For some vacationers, the ideal getaway involves $1,200 ozone therapy or an $1,800 early-detection cancer test.

Call it the longevity vacation. People who are fixated on optimising their personal health are pursuing travel activities that they hope will help them stay healthier for longer. It is part of a broader interest in longevity that often extends beyond traditional medicine . These costly trips and treatments are rising in popularity as money pours into the global wellness travel market.

At high-end resorts, guests can now find biological age testing, poolside vitamin IV drips, and stem-cell therapy. Prices can range from hundreds of dollars for shots and drips to tens of thousands for more invasive procedures, which go well beyond standard wellness offerings like yoga, massages or facials.

Some longevity-inspired trips focus on treatments, while others focus more on social and lifestyle changes. This includes programs that promise to teach travellers the secrets of centenarians .

Mark Blaskovich, 66 years old, spent $4,500 on a five-night trip last year centred on lessons from the world’s “Blue Zones,” places including Sardinia, Italy, and Okinawa, Japan, where a high number of people live for at least 100 years. Blaskovich says he wanted to get on a healthier path as he started to feel the effects of ageing.

He chose a retreat at Modern Elder Academy in Mexico, where he attended workshops detailing the power of supportive relationships, embracing a plant-based diet and incorporating natural movement into his daily life.

“I’ve been interested in longevity and trying to figure out how to live longer and live healthier,” says Blaskovich.

Vitamins and ozone

When Christy Menzies noticed nurses behind a curtained-off area at the Four Seasons Resort Maui in Hawaii on a family vacation in 2022, she assumed it might be Covid-19 testing. They were actually injecting guests with vitamin B12.

Menzies, 40, who runs a travel agency, escaped to the longevity clinic between trips to the beach, pool and kids’ club, where she reclined in a leather chair, and received a 30-minute vitamin IV infusion.

“You’re making investments in your wellness, your health, your body,” says Menzies, who adds that she felt more energised afterward.

The resort has been expanding its offerings since opening a longevity centre in 2021. A multi-day treatment package including ozone therapy, stem-cell therapy and a “fountain of youth” infusion, costs $44,000. Roughly half a dozen guests have shelled out for that package since it made its debut last year, according to Pat Makozak, the resort’s senior spa director. Guests can also opt for an early-detection cancer blood test for $1,800.

The ozone therapy, which involves withdrawing blood, dissolving ozone gas into it, and reintroducing it into the body through an IV, is particularly popular, says Makozak. The procedure is typically administered by a registered nurse, takes upward of an hour and costs $1,200.

Longevity vacationers are helping to fuel the global wellness tourism market, which is expected to surpass $1 trillion in 2024, up from $439 billion in 2012, according to the nonprofit Global Wellness Institute. About 13% of U.S. travellers took part in spa or wellness activities while traveling in the past 12 months, according to a 2023 survey from market-research group Phocuswright.

Canyon Ranch, which has multiple wellness resorts across the country, earlier this year introduced a five-night “Longevity Life” program, starting at $6,750, that includes health-span coaching, bone-density scans and longevity-focused sessions on spirituality and nutrition.

The idea is that people will return for an evaluation regularly to monitor progress, says Mark Kovacs, the vice president of health and performance.

What doctors say

Doctors preach caution, noting many of these treatments are unlikely to have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, producing a placebo effect at best and carrying the potential for harm at worst. Procedures that involve puncturing the skin, such as ozone therapy or an IV drip, risk possible infection, contamination and drug interactions.

“Right now there isn’t a single proven treatment that would prolong the life of someone who’s already healthy,” says Dr. Mark Loafman, a family-medicine doctor in Chicago. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Some studies on certain noninvasive wellness treatments, like saunas or cold plunges , do suggest they may help people feel less stressed, or provide some temporary pain relief or sleep improvement.

Linda True, a policy analyst in San Francisco, spent a day at RAKxa, a wellness retreat on a visit to family in Thailand in February. True, 46, declined the more medical-sounding offerings, like an IV drip, and opted for a traditional style of Thai massage that involved fire and is touted as a “detoxification therapy.”

“People want to spend money on things that they feel might be doing good,” says Dr. Tamsin Lewis, medical adviser at RoseBar Longevity at Six Senses Ibiza, a longevity club that opened last year, whose menu includes offerings such as cryotherapy, infrared sauna and a “Longevity Boost” IV.

RoseBar says there is good evidence that reducing stress contributes to longevity, and Lewis says she doesn’t offer false promises about treatments’ efficacy . Kovacs says Canyon Ranch uses the latest science and personal data to help make evidence-based recommendations.

Jaclyn Sienna India owns a membership-based, ultra luxury travel company that serves people whose net worth exceeds $100 million, many of whom give priority to longevity, she says. She has planned trips for clients to Blue Zones, where there are a large number of centenarians. On one in February, her company arranged a $250,000 weeklong stay for a family of three to Okinawa that included daily meditation, therapeutic massages and cooking classes, she says.

India says keeping up with a longevity-focused lifestyle requires more than one treatment and is cost-prohibitive for most people.

Doctors say travellers may be more likely to glean health benefits from focusing on a common vacation goal : just relaxing.

Dr. Karen Studer, a physician and assistant professor of preventive medicine at Loma Linda University Health says lowering your stress levels is linked to myriad short- and long-term health benefits.

“It may be what you’re getting from these expensive treatments is just a natural effect of going on vacation, decreasing stress, eating better and exercising more.”