If you are looking to get one task done fast, you need to deploy parallel processing.

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As soon as you back off, say by switching off the background music and allowing your foreground process to have all the processing power (and thereby complete its task more quickly), the benefits of having a dual-core machine will become far less tangible.

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Especially confusing, says Gazzaley, is that key brain functions, like short-term memory, processing speed, and the capacity to multi-task, decline steadily as we age.

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Technological changes such as the rise of collaboration tools make it easier to multi-task: you can have a chat window, a word-processing document, a Web browser, and other applications all open at the same time on your computer, and switch easily between them.

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Based at Tres Esquinas, 145 kilometres (90 miles) from Puerto Asis, the prime task of these battalions, officials say, is to secure Putumayo, to enable police to attack its drug-processing laboratories and intensify their efforts to wipe out its coca plantations by spraying them with herbicides.

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