Are you stoned, or just checking e-mail?

E-mail might do more damage to your brain than smoking pot. Yes, you read that right. Let me repeat so you don't have to re-read: E-mail might do more damage to your brain than smoking pot according to the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London (Discover Magazine).

How did they come to that conclusion? Researchers gave IQ tests to two groups of people. One group was given the test without any distractions while the other had to check e-mail and respond to IM while taking the test.

The result: The distracted group scored 10 point lower than the control group. That might not be so surprising, but when a similar test was given to a group intoxicated by marijuana, they scored only 8 points lower. For those of you who are having difficulty following the correlation due to your own distractions by e-mail, IM, text, etc... let me summarize by explaining: the stoned group actually outperformed the e-mail and IM "multitaskers."

Fortunately, the IQ loss was only temporary. Remove the multitasking requirement and the test scores jump back up to normal.

So, what's the moral of the story? Go to work stoned? NO... but don't let e-mail, phone, IM, text, blogs, facebook, youtube, myspace, twitter.... distract you when you're working on important stuff. As the researchers concluded: multitasking is worse for your ability to concentrate than getting stoned.