I accept that multitasking is a myth (in actuality, we’re switch-tasking). But I’ve refused to accept that it’s bad for us. A tiny bit of vindication from Science Daily:
Our obsession with multiple forms of media is not necessarily all bad news, according to a new study by Kelvin Lui and Alan Wong from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Their work shows that those who frequently use different types of media at the same time appear to be better at integrating information from multiple senses — vision and hearing in this instance — when asked to perform a specific task. This may be due to their experience of spreading their attention to different sources of information while media multitasking.
In his latest book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, Jonah Lehrer argues that sometimes a lack of focus can be good for creativity.
The full study.