Multitask-a-go-go

So recently, someone posted this on Hitched. I was sucked in to the deal, though I've really never read either Chatelaine or LouLou. I figured for fifteen bucks, I'd surely get a few good recipes out of it, so it was probably worth it, and it would save me from my occasional desire to magazine it up for $4 every couple of weeks.

In any case, I've gotten a few issues of both and am totally pleased. In particular, Chatelaine is awesome. This makes me feel a bit like my mom, but dude. They have some good articles, fiction, gift ideas, recipes, etc. I'm pretty satisfied with the whole thing and will likely remain a subscriber well into the future.

In the most recent issue, they had an article called The Myth of Multi-Tasking. Now, my husband is an habitual ranter. One of his favourite topics is multitasking, and how it's likely the bane of our culture. He goes on and on forever and a day about how it's got to be creating psychological problems for us as a society, as we surely can't have been meant to function this way. Whenever I sulk about how crazy my day is, and how I'm emailing while chatting with clients on the phone and signalling changes to coworkers, he flies into his usual tirade about the evils of doing-too-much-at-once. Needless to say, he was intensely pleased with himself when I brought this article to his attention.

Basically, the author talks about how women are more built to multitask than men, given our historical positions. While men were responsible for FIND FOOD FIND FOOD FIND FOOD, women were responsible for PROTECT CHILDREN KEEP HOME SAFE MAKE FOOD CLEAN BABIES. That said, she speaks with psychologists and they explain to her that while, yes, we are more geared to doing many things at once, we're not geared towards doing so very much at once.

Apparently, multitasking isn't an issue when you're using different parts of your brain at the same time. I loved this particular example.

How many words are in the following sentence: Now is the time for a few good men to come to the aid of their country?

No cheating. Count it out before you read on.

Okay, got your answer? Good. It doesn't matter what it is. The psychologist's question to the author: Did you count the words on your fingers?

You know you did. I sure did. And my husband did too when I pulled this one on him. It's because we can't think the numbers and think the sentence efficiently at the same time. It's much easier to use two parts of our brains.

This is also, she goes on to explain, why we turn the music down in the car when we're in complicated driving situations. We can't listen to the music and think about reverse parking between two poles at the same time.

The article also pointed out that the level of multitasking required today also has an impact on our short-term memory, and that people can develop symptoms similar to ADD because of it. She even goes as far as to suggest that we're losing our capacity to generate unique, innovative ideas because of the way we work. Interesting stuff.

All this considered, I think that we all probably have to figure out how to multitask less -- how to focus better and still get our jobs done and our personal lives managed well. It's tough, given the competitive and frantic climate that we all work and live in, but the idea that I could be losing my ability to think well has got my head in a bit of a knot.