Multi Tasking Is a Waste of Time

864 Words4 Pages
In the essay, “Multitasking Can Make You Loose…Um…Focus,” the author Alina Tugend sets out to prove that multitasking does not save time. In fact she uses a number of professionals including psychologists and professors to persuade readers that slowing down and completing one task at a time is more beneficial when it comes to time management and mental health then multitasking can be. Tugend does a marvelous job convincing her readers of this fact in her well-organized and researched essay. The opening statement is an excellent attention grabber. Immediately, Tugend presents the reader with a very clear idea about the everyday multitasking that we all can find ourselves performing: * “As you are reading this article, are you listening to music or the radio? Yelling at your children? If you are looking at it online, are you emailing or instant-messaging at the same time? Checking your stocks?” (653). * However, Tugend also at the same time sympathizes with her readers that multitasking, “can be a way of making tasks more fun and energizing.” (653). * Tugend then quickly introduces her first source, psychiatrist and author Edward M. Hallowell to support her thesis that multitasking causes one to loose focus when switching between tasks. In paragraph five on page 653, Tugend seems to know the dispute some readers will have with this statement and very quickly answers by writing, “For some people, listening to music while working actually makes them more creative because they are using different cognitive functions.” For those readers needing more proof, Tugend uses Earl Miller a professor of neuroscience and his studies with electrodes to explain the capacity of the human brains ability when it comes to routine tasks. She uses Millers knowledge to state that, “we can do a couple of things at the same time if they are routine but once

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