Just a few days ago in the staff coffee room we had a discussion about multi-tasking vs task switching. A small sample size but there was a very strong female bias towards multi-tasking/ task switching and male bias towards task shifting/ time boxing. A lot of the authors of books about the latter approach also identify as male. Got me wondering whether (apologies for sweeping generalisations and simplistic and binary approach here) women are more capable of multi-tasking/ task switching due to neuro-anatomical/ -hormonal differences or whether social/personal expectations mean women feel more pressure to multitask and whether there is a tendency to under perform at work and feel more stressed as a result. On the days I work from home I feel as though I am living 2 concurrent lives - the housekeeper (who is considering how many loads of washing I can get dry on the line, answer questions about where items of lost PE kit are, unpack shopping deliveries, make appointments for children etc) and the worker. It doesn’t feel easy to chunk these separate tasks into manageable blocks. I feel a superwoman at midday juggling everything and buzzing on the cortisol high but frazzled by dinner time as I haven’t finished all the tasks I set myself both at home and at work. (Please note my husband is amazing and pulls his weight equally but we play to our strengths and my strengths definitely are not DIY and being linesperson at son’s football matches etc both activities which are more easily given a designated block of time to complete). Running is great as I can’t do anything else although just realised how many runs I multitask using them as an opportunity to socialise or do jobs (eg collect a parcel) and keep fit! And a final question, please can you explain why my husband has to stop the action of drying up when he answers a question? Is this an example of his complete inability to multitask or is it that he is giving his complete focus to each activity and micro time boxing 😂
Thanks so much for the reply Katie. This is really interesting — and funny! Couple of thoughts here ...
First of all, though it's possible to have a conversation while running or answer a question while drying the dishes (!) what people are generally talking about when they talk about 'multi-tasking' is actually rapid task-switching. And there's copious evidence that task-switching is terrible for everyone's performance.*
Secondly, the gender difference thing is actually quite well-researched and the evidence is that that stereotype doesn't reflect reality. The best study I'm aware of is Patricia Hirsch, Iring Koch, and Julia Karbach, “Putting a Stereotype to the Test: The Case of Gender Differences in Multitasking Costs in Task-Switching and Dual-Task Situations,” PLOS ONE 14, no. 8 (August 14, 2019): e0220150, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220150.
My guess is that what's going on is that many women's lives *require* an awful lot of task switching, which women adapt to and pay a price for. (You say you're frazzled by dinner-time.)
So ... I recognise everything you say. But I am still pretty sure (as the evidence suggests) that we do better when we focus on one thing at a time.
*Robert D. Rogers and Stephen Monsell, “Costs of a Predictible Switch between Simple Cognitive Tasks,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 124, no. 2 (1995): 207–31, https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.124.2.207; Renata F. I. Meuter and Alan Allport, “Bilingual Language Switching in Naming: Asymmetrical Costs of Language Selection,” Journal of Memory and Language 40, no. 1 (January 1, 1999): 25–40, https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.1998.2602; Joshua S. Rubinstein, David E. Meyer, and Jeffrey E. Evans, “Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 27, no. 4 (2001): 763–97, https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.27.4.763; Ulrich Mayr and Reinhold Kliegl, “Task-Set Switching and Long-Term Memory Retrieval,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 26, no. 5 (2000): 1124–40, https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.26.5.1124.
Just a few days ago in the staff coffee room we had a discussion about multi-tasking vs task switching. A small sample size but there was a very strong female bias towards multi-tasking/ task switching and male bias towards task shifting/ time boxing. A lot of the authors of books about the latter approach also identify as male. Got me wondering whether (apologies for sweeping generalisations and simplistic and binary approach here) women are more capable of multi-tasking/ task switching due to neuro-anatomical/ -hormonal differences or whether social/personal expectations mean women feel more pressure to multitask and whether there is a tendency to under perform at work and feel more stressed as a result. On the days I work from home I feel as though I am living 2 concurrent lives - the housekeeper (who is considering how many loads of washing I can get dry on the line, answer questions about where items of lost PE kit are, unpack shopping deliveries, make appointments for children etc) and the worker. It doesn’t feel easy to chunk these separate tasks into manageable blocks. I feel a superwoman at midday juggling everything and buzzing on the cortisol high but frazzled by dinner time as I haven’t finished all the tasks I set myself both at home and at work. (Please note my husband is amazing and pulls his weight equally but we play to our strengths and my strengths definitely are not DIY and being linesperson at son’s football matches etc both activities which are more easily given a designated block of time to complete). Running is great as I can’t do anything else although just realised how many runs I multitask using them as an opportunity to socialise or do jobs (eg collect a parcel) and keep fit! And a final question, please can you explain why my husband has to stop the action of drying up when he answers a question? Is this an example of his complete inability to multitask or is it that he is giving his complete focus to each activity and micro time boxing 😂
Thanks so much for the reply Katie. This is really interesting — and funny! Couple of thoughts here ...
First of all, though it's possible to have a conversation while running or answer a question while drying the dishes (!) what people are generally talking about when they talk about 'multi-tasking' is actually rapid task-switching. And there's copious evidence that task-switching is terrible for everyone's performance.*
Secondly, the gender difference thing is actually quite well-researched and the evidence is that that stereotype doesn't reflect reality. The best study I'm aware of is Patricia Hirsch, Iring Koch, and Julia Karbach, “Putting a Stereotype to the Test: The Case of Gender Differences in Multitasking Costs in Task-Switching and Dual-Task Situations,” PLOS ONE 14, no. 8 (August 14, 2019): e0220150, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220150.
My guess is that what's going on is that many women's lives *require* an awful lot of task switching, which women adapt to and pay a price for. (You say you're frazzled by dinner-time.)
So ... I recognise everything you say. But I am still pretty sure (as the evidence suggests) that we do better when we focus on one thing at a time.
*Robert D. Rogers and Stephen Monsell, “Costs of a Predictible Switch between Simple Cognitive Tasks,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 124, no. 2 (1995): 207–31, https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.124.2.207; Renata F. I. Meuter and Alan Allport, “Bilingual Language Switching in Naming: Asymmetrical Costs of Language Selection,” Journal of Memory and Language 40, no. 1 (January 1, 1999): 25–40, https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.1998.2602; Joshua S. Rubinstein, David E. Meyer, and Jeffrey E. Evans, “Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 27, no. 4 (2001): 763–97, https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.27.4.763; Ulrich Mayr and Reinhold Kliegl, “Task-Set Switching and Long-Term Memory Retrieval,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 26, no. 5 (2000): 1124–40, https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.26.5.1124.