I’ve wavered on the question of multitasking. Is it a valuable skill? An empty buzzword? Are people who claim to be deft at it really deluding themselves?

We may be doing more things than ever, but what are we really accomplishing? If, for instance, I attempt to simultaneously write a Progressive Manufacturing nomination, scan email alerts as they hit my inbox, and read Twitter messages as they pop up on screen, am I boosting my productivity or just fooling myself?

I’m fooling myself, say Stanford researchers. Check out this video on their recent study on multitasking.

The problem, as I see it, is that we try to emulate the hardware and software that surrounds us, working faster and on more tasks simultaneously. But computers have parallel processors and tools like virtualization and RAM. In effect, they have extra brains, so running five applications simultaneously is a cinch. We humans engineer them to do this, and we double their ability to do it every couple of years. There is no analogous process for the human brain. In one generation we’ve gone from talking on the phone or conducting in-person meetings to talking to the person next to us while listening to music, updating our Facebook status, and checking our friends’ tweets.

Why would we expect to be good at this so soon? That’s like expecting a toddler to dunk on LeBron. Human evolution is a slow bird, and as yet it hasn’t delivered an eight-core version of our brain. For now we should accept our role as batch processors, not real-time processors, and seek therapy for our processor envy.

But while we may all have it wrong, lean manufacturing has gotten it right. Even as it strives for continuous improvement, it does so on human terms. There are work cells governed by careful work instructions that detail discrete tasks. One thing at a time, please. That’s the best we can do. At least until a new model arrives.

(For another perspective on mutlitasking, check out a recent article by DC Velocity‘s Peter Bradley.)