What is worse marijuana use or multitasking? A recent British Study shows a person can hurt their IQ more when multitasking.

The Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London conducted a study to investigate what damages a person’s IQ more: multitasking, smoking marijuana, or losing a night of sleep. The results show multitasking temporarily lowers a person’s IQ by 10 points, according to http://chicagotribune.com.

“When we multitask, we lose our focus, obviously, on what is important,” Gerry Sansone, social studies teacher, said. “We lose focus on what we are working on, and it minimizes the quality of work.”

Many students involved with numerous activities multitask. Flora Duff, senior, is just one example of a student with a lot on her plate to accomplish.

Duff is involved with an assortment of activities which range from NHS, Spanish Club, Interact, to Band. She works at Putt and Play and volunteers at Good Shepherd Hospital. On top of all her activities, Duff also takes honors and AP classes.

With all of these activities, it is necessary for Duff to plan out her days to ensure all her activities, school work, and regular work is completed, according to Duff.

“I am not as good with time management as I should be,” Duff said. “Every weekend I plan out everything I have to do during the next week, and if [activities] overlap, I have to prioritize.”

However, participation in activities and quality of school work can still go down if a student takes on too much, according to Sansone.

“Even if we have practice for sports or have an activity we have to make sure we get a good night’s sleep and eat a good meal,” Sansone said. “Also, I feel that multitasking puts too much stress on a person because they know the quality of work is going down because they are not giving their full attention to that one task.”

Students not only have to worry about the quality of school work declining or performing badly in a sport of activity, they also have to worry about their overall health, according to Sansone.

“When a person multitasks it is because they are taking on too many activities,” Sansone said. “Sooner or later one of those activities is going to suffer, whether it is the activity, the school work, or the person’s health

For Duff, the one thing that suffers is her sleeping habits.

“On average, I get about 4 to 5 hours of sleep at night, even though I should get around 8 to 9 hours,” Duff said. “This even though I am doing well, hurts my performance in my early classes, which happen to be my hardest classes.”

Sansone believes the best way to overcome multitasking is to choose certain activities which are important and pursue them along with school work.

“Take responsibilities one at a time,” Sansone said. “Prioritize, work up until you are too tired, then go to sleep and start over the next day. This is all you can really do.”