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 DOCTORMUSE is categorically a uni-task master.

Remember the days when you were praised for managing phone calls with one ear while simultaneously sending emails?  Brain efficiency was judged proportional to how many concurrent  tasks could be accomplished.  Everybody tried to compete for the coveted multi-tasking efficiency office award and winners were assured raises and promotions.  What happened to that turn of the century mantra?  Now it's 2010 and where did all the multi-tasking professionals go?  What many considered a "new paradigm" of the digital age quickly went up in smoke with the realization that gadgets are great for multi-tasking but people's minds are not.  Some people earned a one way ticket to the funny farm while others ended up in federal prisons.  Laws were created preventing people from multi-tasking like the cell phone use while driving law and soon we can expect a similar texting while driving law to pass thru congress.  In 2009,  Stamford University Communication professor Clifford Nass published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab.  The study showed heavy media multitaskers are paying a big mental price for their actions.  "They are suckers for irrelevancy and everything distracts them."

A more recent study conducted by  Etienne Koechlin, director of the cognitive neuroscience laboratory at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm) in Paris found that although humans have difficulty switching between tasks and cannot seem to do more than one thing at a time, the brain can simultaneously keep track of two separate goals and "can distribute two goals to different hemispheres to keep them both in mind--if it perceives a worthy reward for doing so."  It suggests we're not as bad at multi-tasking as some studies suggest but there are still increased dual-task consequences.

The moral of the story; multi-tasking is mostly a myth that even the most efficient brainiacs can't handle, and with vehicular manslaughter convictions for texting/driving related accidents on the rise the consequences are much more severe than those for pushing emails to unintended recipients.  Stick to doing one thing at a time and doing it the right way.  You'll reach your goal a little more slowly but you'll get there predictably and with better results.