Mythical multi-tasking

My daughter’s visit with her husband and her own daughter has come and gone. They left yesterday, after lunch, to visit the other grandma. We had the obligatory walk to the local stream with bridge where ‘Pooh-sticks’ (see Winnie-the-Pooh) could be thrown in the water. GD2 allocated sticks all round and we entered into races, in which the idea was that her stick won.

As usual, after any visit, I spent a long time doing nothing, in order to recover from making an effort. As I’ve said, I will never be high-powered. I had a glance, this morning at an article in the New Scientist which gives the lie to the rumour that women are able to ‘multi-task’. When I attributed this talent to me in my profile, I was being ironic. I’ve always believed the myth – and New Scientist says it is a myth – that women were multi-skilled, but I have always known it doesn’t apply to me. I can’t even cook and talk at the same time, and I have to turn off the car radio if I arrive at some unusual situation. According to NS, what our brains do, is to put the items it has to deal with in order. Those people who really do two things at the same time, do not necessarily do them well. I find if I read the paper and watch the TV, I miss out on something that someone has said. This comes as no surprise, as when I was doing Psychology with Open University some years ago, we learned about attention at the summer school. You cannot give your attention to more than one thing at a time – this is why people have accidents when talking on the phone and driving their cars.

As for women and so-called ‘multi-tasking’, what they can do, and I include myself here, is to turn their attention from one job to another – that’s completely different. So I can prepare the meal – which I’ve just done – and come straight to the computer to write what’s on my mind – which I am doing. On some days bookkeeping will follow loading the washing machine; on others, I will turn from writing a story to ironing some shirts. Hopefully, shortly, dinner will be done, as for the moment, I’ve finished here.