Shelly Sadler

Mr. Christopher Wyman

English 111 M08
Final Group Paper Draft
13 October 2016

Multitasking in today's day in age is no longer seen as a talent that few can properly
manage, but more so as a necessity to achieve the nearly unachievable. Today people are
required to multitask in order to survive everyday life. Have you ever been faced with many
things to do, but knew if done entirely, you would not be able to finish? People are constantly
faced with tasks, but lack of time or sense of time management leave them unable to succeed. In
the classroom this has become an issue. With the multiple tasks students are faced with, they are
pressed for time. When doing one task, they are distracted by another. Due to these high
demands, our brains are being rewired in a negative way.
Having the ability to juggle more than one task at a time does not only make what you are
attempting to focus on a slower process, but it is also changing the way your brain is hardwired.
Summer Allen, the author of The Multitasking Mind states, We might be in great trouble when
we try to juggle more than two tasks, simply because we have only two frontal lobes. The brain
itself is in constant battle, trying to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. As a student
being forced to focus on numerous classes at once and the struggles of life outside of school,
multitasking is needed to succeed. When the brain is attempting to focus on multiple things at
once, it divides and separates, allowing room for more mistakes and for distractions to overtake.
According to Allen, Frequent multitaskers also have a harder time ignoring external

distractions. While this news may come as obvious, it is detrimental to the average student,
seeing as though many of them are avid multitaskers.
In many cases, distraction has lead to much worse than the average issue. Mentally this
frequently leads to numerous attention-deficit disorders such as ADD and ADHD. These
disorders are often the blame of distraction and lack of time-management in adults, and
commonly go undiagnosed among millions in the US. Jessie Sholl, author of The Distracted
Adult, explains the havoc these disorders have on the lives of adults. Sholl quotes Koretsky, a
woman living with ADD, I was really struggling. It felt like I had put in so much more work
and effort just to keep things together; it was hard for me to get to work on time; there was never
any food in my fridge; there was never anytime to keep the apartment clean or get my laundry
done. It felt like I was constantly struggling to keep up. With classes, and everyday life, it is not
only hard for students with these disorders, but average students as well. The mentality of adults
is now to complete as many tasks as they can at once, to keep up with the high demands of
society. This demand has progressed into poor time management.
Time management is a skill most adults lack in todays date in age. This lack of skill
makes them unable to academically succeed. Not knowing when to make time to study for
classes, do homework, go to work, and still get a decent amount of sleep, is all part of the time
management skill we as adult learners need to acquire. Research found by the Journal of
Educational Technology and Society that, adult learners frequently fail in the completion of
online courses due to poor time management strategy.(222) With no time management
strategies, adults often struggle with passing courses, becoming a large problem in modern
learning with adults. With all things we adults have on our plates, we have to figure out how to
manage all of our tasks with the time allotted.

As a society with many obligations, we tend to lean toward doing everything at once.
Instead of doing one task completely then moving on to the next, we are performing both at
once. In the article Distractions Make Learning Harder, by Peter Stevenson, he discusses why
multitasking has become a key problem in learning. He explains that even if you are able to learn
while distracted, it alters the way you learn. Russell A. Poldrack, a psychology professor at the
University of California, Los Angeles, explains What's new is that even if you can learn while
distracted, it changes how you learn to make it less efficient and useful While we may be able
to multitask, we arent able to do it in an efficient way. When we multitask, we are working on so
many things at once, that we arent fully devoted to the task at the time. In the classroom, this
would lead to not being able to memorize as well. Most students of today's age study, watch tv,
and are talking to friends and family at the same time. Then when they are asked in detail about
one of those, they can not recall what had happened. In Poldracks research, he performed an
experiment to further understand the effect of distraction on students. He writes in his findings,
Participants were asked to predict the weather after receiving a repeated set of cues. During part
of the learning, researchers added a second task where participants had to keep a running mental
count of high tones that they heard, thus adding an element of distraction. After performing this
experiment he found that at the time it did not affect the participant's ability to predict the
weather, but later, when asked to recall the high tones, they were not able to.
Our culture can be defined by the attention we give things valued as a whole;
understanding that what we value most is what we pay more attention to. Unfortunately, in
todays demanding society, we are conforming to negative time management habits created by
distractions that reconfigure our brains for worse. These distractions suffocate our attention and
make life more difficult by creating more problems. Considering the limited amount of time we

have, multitasking is essential in order to become successful. However, multitasking divides our
limited attention span resulting in a less efficient outcome making it harder to focus on one
specific goal. Without self control to manage time wisely, distractions will continue to consume
our attention and condition our brains negatively.

Sources
Allen, Summer. "The Multitasking Mind." Brain Facts. N.p., 9 Oct. 2013. Web. 18 Oct.
2016.
Schwartz, Katrina. "Age of Distraction: Why Its Crucial for Students to Learn to Focus."
MindShift. N.p., 5 Dec. 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2016.

Sholl, Jessie. "The Distracted Adult." Experience Life. N.p., 01 June 2011. Web. 19 Oct.
2016.
Weir, Kirsten. "The Power of Self-Control." American Psychological Association. APA,
Jan. 2012. Web. 19 Oct. 2016.