This TED Talk features economist, journalist, and broadcaster Tim Harford, recorded live at TED at Merck, KGA, Darmstadt, Germany, 2018.

Tim also hosts a podcast called Cautionary Tales, where he retells true stories of unexpected outcomes, from the development of tanks in modern warfare

to the accidental crowning of La La Land at the 2017 Oscars. You can find cautionary tales

wherever you listen to podcasts. To do two things at once is to do neither. It's a great smackdown of multitasking, isn't it?

Often attributed to the Roman writer Publilius Cirrus, although you know how these things are.

He probably never said it. What I'm interested in, though, is it true. I mean, it's obviously

true for emailing at the dinner table or texting while

driving or possibly for live tweeting a TED talk as well. But I'd like to argue that for an important

kind of activity, doing two things at once or three or even four is exactly what we should be

aiming for. Look no further than Albert Einstein. In 1905,

he published four remarkable scientific papers. One of them was on Brownian motion. It provided

empirical evidence that atoms exist, and it laid out the basic mathematics behind most of

financial economics. Another one was mathematics behind most of financial economics.

Another one was on the theory of special relativity.

Another one was on the photoelectric effect.

That's why solar panels work.

It's a nice one.

Gave him the Nobel Prize for that one.

And the fourth introduced an equation you might have heard of,

E equals MC squared. So tell me again how you shouldn't

do several things at once. Now, obviously, working simultaneously on Brownian motion special

relativity and the photoelectric effect, it's not exactly the same kind of multitasking as

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