Creative Aging: Losing Multitasking Skills

I’m so good at multitasking that I can listen, ignore, and forget all at once. —Facebook Meme

Photo by ALVENSIA ANGELA on Unsplash

“Don’t talk to me now,” my husband Marlo says as we approach an exit on the interstate in heavy traffic. At that point he needs to focus on driving and doesn’t want the distraction of a conversation.

Decades ago, he carried on a conversation while making driving decisions, but that ability to do both at the same time has faded. His experience is typical. Studies have shown that, as the years go by, the multitasking ability of older adults fades. We are no longer as good at it as when we were younger.

Well, sort of.

It turns out none of us are as good at it as we might think.

Earl Miller, MIT neuroscientist and expert on divided attention, says our brains are not made to multitask well. “When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost in doing so.”

Already in the 1990s, researchers found when people switched back and forth between two tasks, they were slower than when they completed first one task and then another. The more complex the tasks were, the more time they lost when switching tasks.

In addition, researchers found that task-switching resulted in less accurate work. When switching tasks, we make more mistakes.

Retention of information while task-switching is also poorer. College students who were on social media while doing homework completed that homework more slowly and got poorer grades. They also retained less information from lectures if they used social media during those lectures.

When multitasking is habitual, it can affect how the brain works, causing it to retain less information. We become less able to focus on one task, even when we want to mono-task.

When older adults have more trouble with multiple tasks, their difficulty actually comes in switching between tasks. We have more difficulty disengaging from an interruption, and then more difficulty re-engaging with the original task. If we answer a phone call when headed for the bedroom, we have more difficulty leaving that call behind and more difficulty retrieving why we were headed to the bedroom in the first place. Just as aging bodies are stiffer and less mobile, so aging brains have more difficulty maneuvering.

We also have more brain chatter than at younger ages. Brain scans of children and young adults show them able to concentrate on just one item with their full attention; older adults have more scattered thoughts in general. On a walk with a friend, we might also be thinking of what’s on our grocery list. A nurse said when she worked in war zones decades ago, she could give her full attention to patients, treating the ones in most urgent need of medical care and going from patient to patient in rapid succession. Now she would also be reflecting on the morality of war.

The truth is this: the attempt to multitask was never good for us, not even when we were young. So, rather than lamenting our inability to switch rapidly from one task to another, we can work on becoming skilled mono-taskers, which is more efficient anyway:

-We can give ourselves permission to work on one task at a time, choose the most important task in this moment, and focus on it.

-We can chunk tasks, dividing them up into categories. Instead of checking emails or texts multiple times per day, we can designate a few times a day for those tasks, and let them accumulate until our next designated time.

-If we really feel we cannot get everything done without doing multiple tasks at once, perhaps we should remove a few commitments from our lives. We can do a little less and do it better.

-We can practice focus. We can take several deep breaths and choose one thing to focus on for the next 20-30 minutes, setting a timer for accountability. Then we can take a five-minute break and repeat the process.

There’s a non-intellectual benefit to single-tasking as well. When we slow down and focus on one task at a time, we become mindful; we become present to the moment. And that has a wide range of benefits, including combating depression, anxiety, and chronic pain.

Perhaps the growing need to do one thing at a time is a blessing in disguise.

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Reader question: Were you present to the moment for the opening photo? Did you notice what the man is doing besides talking on the phone?

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Adapted from Creative Aging by Carol Van Klompenburg, published 2023, available from Amazon and for Pella-area residents at Pella Books, the Curiosity Shop, or directly from Carol. Carol has an MA in theater arts and is available for reading performances of her writing on aging, moments in her gardens, memories, and other topics.