Italian Judges Reaffirm the Perils of Multitasking

There's a joke in here somewhere, but consider what happens when you study the work of 21 judges in Milan, Italy, given thousands of cases to move through and a roughly equal spread of work. The National Bureau of Economic Research found that those judges who kept fewer trials open and active, and prioritized closing old cases over new cases, could "dispose more rapidly" of cases in the same time period as judges who kept more cases open at once, as NPR's Planet Money explains. Judges have a somewhat unique job, of course, but it's an interesting study of the potential impact of trying to keep too many folders open at once. [Planet Money; Image via steakpinball.]