So you think you can multi-task

A friend of mine was excitedly discussing her job with a high-tech firm.  "Our meetings are so great and vibrant.  While the sessions are going on, we are all on our computers multi-tasking.  It's so efficient!"

Well, no.  There's a lot of evidence that constant interruptions do not improve efficiency and that they also impair quality.  Here's a recent example, published in Human Factors.  It focused solely on interruptions during the course of writing and concluded:

Our research suggests that interruptions negatively impact quality of work during a complex, creative writing task.