Aren't women supposed to be good multitaskers? I'm a terrible multitasker. I can't focus on even two different stimuli at once -- listening to music while trying to work, for example, is asking for failure. It's one of the reasons I'm not good at talking on the phone: unless I'm in an empty white box, I can't focus on the conversation and my surroundings at the same time. Even if said surroundings are not asking me to interact with them, it's the sheer fact of their being there that distracts me. Interesting ad goes by on the side of a bus? I trail off mid-sentence. And god help the person on the other end if the TV is on! I'm like one of those toads who are easily hypnotized by blinking lights. This can't be normal. Help!
3 comments:
Sheesh... You sure came by that naturally. I can't even...(What's that?) ... Oh, anyway... what was I saying?
I guess it means that whatever you're doing gets 100 percent of that wonderful noggin of yours.
=o)
Love you!!!!!!!!!1
No, actually, that's perfectly normal - have I mentioned the book "Brain Rules" to you? It's a book of 12 useful things that are solidly supported by brain research. One of them is that the brain _cannot_ multitask. There's one thing that can give attention, and it needs to go through a context switching process that takes a large fraction of a second to go from one thing to the next. People who appear to be multitasking are just holding multiple things in short term memory and switching between them a lot. And multitasking isn't more time efficient, even if it feels like it - most of the time, it's much less efficient.
Your post illustrates perfectly another point he talked about related to that: driving while talking on a cell phone is inherently dangerous, because in order to talk to somebody who's not there, the brain needs to focus on that other "world" where the person on the other end is; it has nothing to do with whether you're using your hands or not (so hands-free laws are stupid and pointless, and probably counterproductive).
It probably explains some of why I hate talking on the phone as well...
Well, then! I will happily embrace the idea that telephoning disability is simply a sign of attentiveness and safety. Go research!
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