Should You Ban Technology from Meetings?

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Should You Ban Technology from Meetings?

A few years ago the idea of multitasking was viewed as a wonderful way to get more done. It seemed logical to conduct business on the phone while driving to work; to answer email while watching TV; to run the month-end numbers while carrying on a conversation with a co-worker.

But over time multitasking has revealed itself as a bit of a fraud, nowhere near the productivity tool it was cracked up to be. Quite the reverse, in fact, since all indications are that people do a much better job when they focus on one task at a time.

According to a wide range of research studies, our brains really don’t “multitask” or carry on simultaneous activities. It may appear to us that we’re accomplishing two or more tasks at the same time, but we’re not. We focus on one thing, then another, and then yet another—all occurring so closely together that we think it’s happening simultaneously. To carry this out, our brains must engage in a stressful mental balancing act that requires constant acrobatics to keep all the balls aloft.

Experiments measuring brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging reveal that multitasking interferes with the brain in various ways. The mental manipulation required for multitasking demands more from areas of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination, while short-changing other areas related to memory and learning.

Every time we do one of those simultaneous switches from one task to another we pay a “resumption price.” That price is the second or two it takes for your brain to figure out what it had been doing with the task before being interrupted. Once it figures that out, you can resume the task. Those seconds add up—and they’re fatiguing. That’s why it can be more productive, and less costly physically, to “unitask” or work on one task at a time.

As we stated earlier, multitasking has been falling out of favor for a while now (witness the spate of state laws that prohibit driving while holding a cell phone). Perhaps you’ve made decisions that reflect a desire to multitask less and unitask more: you’re checking email only at specific times of the day, say.

An increasing number of companies are taking steps against multitasking, too.

One such company is California-based Adaptive Path, which helps organizations develop product and design concepts through experience strategy (clients include Blogger, PeopleSoft, PBS, Creative Commons, MySpace, Agilent, and Cathay Pacific).

Over time, the company’s management realized that meetings were so unproductive that more meetings were required to get things done. Why? Simply because employees were busy multitasking throughout the meetings. They’d glance at Blackberries, surf phones, check email on laptops, and so on. While believing themselves to be in full attendance at the meeting, they were partially somewhere else. “They were distracted,” according to co-founder and co-president Jesse James Garrett.

Adaptive Path eventually banned technology from meetings where important decisions would be made, including board meetings. For some, it was hard to adjust, but, according to Garrett, “It’s embedded in the culture now…Having people’s attention has been really valuable.”
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© Suzanne Rodriguez
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