The ability to tackle several jobs at once is supposed to be a good thing. But it causes stress – and could be rewiring our brains. I am one of life’s busy multi-taskers .
I can cook dinner as I chat to a friend on the telephone, while also answering a work email, feeding the dog and compiling a shopping list for a forthcoming birthday celebration. Except, the trouble is, I forget to add salt to the chicken, I miss something important my friend tells me, the email is grammatically wrong, the dog gets the cat’s food and I put the list down somewhere, never to be found again. Multi-tasking is brandished as an exceptional life skill; flaunted on CVs as a “must-have attribute” and held up – often by women – as a superpower.
Yet studies show that multi-tasking is a bit of a myth . Yes, you can carry out tasks in succession; you can even manage them at super speed if you are that way inclined. But once they start overlapping, things tend to go skew-whiff.
Perhaps that explains why yesterday, when I was writing an article for this paper and trying to listen to my husband explain why the fridge had stopped working, he accused me of not paying attention. I tried a falsely assertive, “I heard everything you said”. But not being a buffoon, he sussed that my vacant stare was emblematic of a confused brain.
I’m loath to admit it, but it’s true – my grey matter often can’t cope with more than one thing at a time. So, perhaps I am not the competent multi-tasker I o.
