Do you pride yourself on being an excellent multitasker? Do you find yourself doing your homework while watching your favorite TV show, or watching YouTube videos from coworkers in between completing an important work project, you may want to reconsider the way you focus your attention.

A new study from researchers at Standford University finds that people who multitask the most are often the worst at it. In an age where we are suffocated by content - whether it's televised, printed, streaming online or coming in via text - it can be difficult to focus on one thing at a time (and often creates safety and health hazards). This study shows that our productivity and ability to fully dedicate ourselves to a single task suffers the more we widen our attention span.

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The researchers studied 262 college undergrads, dividing them into two groups: high and low multitaskers. At any given time, high multitaskers found themselves using an average of 4 mediums (such as music, video games, television, reading, etc.) at once. Low multitaskers, on the other hand, use only 1.5 at at time.

"The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media. We were totally shocked," said Clifford Nass, a professor at Stanford's communications department.

The study compared each group's abilities to memorize items and switch from task to task, along with their ability to focus on a single task. They tested their ability to ignore irrelevant information by showing them a group of red and blue rectangles, blanking them out, and then showing them again and asking if the red ones had moved, thus requiring them to ignore the blue rectangles.

Researchers thought the high multitaskers would be better at it.

"But they're not. They're worse. They're much worse," said Nass. The high media multitaskers couldn't ignore the blue rectangles. "They couldn't ignore stuff that doesn't matter. They love stuff that doesn't matter," he said.

Can they consume information and organize it, though? "They are worse at that, too," Nass said.

"So then we thought, OK, maybe they have bigger memories. They don't. They were equal" with the low multitaskers, he added.

Even heir ability to switch from task to task was deficient. When asked to classify a letter as a vowel or consonant, or a number as even or odd, the high multitaskers took longer to make the switch from one task to the other.

"They couldn't help thinking about the task they weren't doing," lead author Eyal Ophir said. "The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can't keep things separate in their minds."

But isn't that what multitasking is all about?! So we're doing it more, and getting worse at it? Researchers looked into the difference between high- and low-multitaskers, thinking it may be a matter of "exploring" versus "exploiting."

"High multitaskers just love more and more information. Their greatest thrill is to get more," he said. On the other hand, "exploiters like to think about the information they already have."

Still up in the air is why the people who multitask the most are the worst at it. Wouldn't they be better at it? "Is multitasking causing them to be lousy at multitasking, or is their lousiness at multitasking causing them to be multitaskers?" Nass wondered. "Is it born or learned?"

This begs the question - if being a heavy multitasker makes us less productive, what is the benefit in dividing our attention? Seems like the obvious answer would be to train ourselves to focus on one thing at a time, and do a better job.

Do you consider yourself a high multitasker? Does this information make you reconsider how you tackle each of your projects?

via AP