Brain Work

A friend sent me an article from Newsweek on multi-tasking. Why me? I guess I have a reputation for working on more than one project at once. The article by Herbert Wray suggested that if we don’t nurture our brains, we may not have the ability to make rational decisions.

And how do we nurture our brains? Well, an experiment tested whether people were more or less likely to make a poor decisions depending upon whether or not they had supplied their brain with enough fuel.

To begin, all subjects ‘exhausted’ their mental faculties with a set exercise. Some subject were then allowed to refuel themselves while others were not. The fuel in the study was sugar. Researchers found that those who were ‘re-energized’ were able to make better decisions than those who were not.

That in and of itself is an interesting result. I had not thought of ‘feeding’ my brain when I am using it a lot. Perhaps all that snacking in the libraries back in the days of studying for exams was actually helping me study.

What relates more to the topic of multi-tasking is the task that all the subjects had to complete. It involved using their brain for more than one process at a time. Specifically, subjects had to watch a silent video of a woman talking. A series of words flashed across the screen, but subjects were told to ignore the words; if they found themselves distracted by the words, they were to refocus their attention on the woman. This is actually a difficult task. It requires a lot of mental effort to not read the words right in front of you. Perhaps akin to focusing upon one subject while another task that you need to do is staring you in the face.

Viewing the video and ignoring the words mentally exhausted the subjects. Now that is the message for multi-taskers – their multi-tasking is hard work for their brains. Those who did not stop and re-energize their brains were less able to make rational decisions.

So, the next time that you find yourself balancing too many balls at once, remember the value of taking a break, particularly before making a critical decision.

Judy Warner