One of our dogs is better at multi-tasking than the other - in response to having his back rubbed, he can wag his tail and eat at the same time. The other dog's tail, exposed to an identical stimulus (back rubbing) plus task (eating), remains motionless. The same 'other dog' cannot walk, sense that his lead is tangled and set about disentangling himself - instead, his approach is to stop and wait for his two legged friend to execute the disentangling. The dog that multi-tasks - eats and wags - on sensing that he is tangled, will endeavour to achieve disentanglement himself. Without the aid of his two legged friend. While continuing to walk. Which dog is which? And what does the ability to multi-task say about which is more intelligent?
It has long been cited that women are better at multi-tasking than men. Various hypotheses attempt to answer why this is the case. Perhaps, it is an evolutionary trait - the care, protection, feeding and all round nurturing of the next generation is perhaps best done by only one of the sexes; leaving the other free to obsess about how fast his chosen method of transport is and whether his ball skills are better than the next man's. Businesses have even attempted to harness this gender bias is multi-tasking ability. Men have linear thinking responding badly to influences that impact and attempt to sidetrack them. Give a man, skilled at job A, an additional job B to perform simultaneously and the time to completion of job A will increase - give him several additional jobs to do and the risk is that he will grind to a halt; job A won't be finished today and depending on the size of the stack of additional jobs, may not be completed this side of next week/next month/next year/ever. Give a man one job to do and you optimise the chance that he will do it well. Women's minds are more multifaceted - they can think linearly but will absorb a myriad of stimuli around them. They can simultaneously do jobs A, B, C, D, E & F. But they will (research has shown it to be true, I am afraid) in doing so, complete job A slower than their singularly tasked male colleagues. Their overall productivity over time might be broader but it will be slower.
Here's a little test to illustrate what I mean - Picture the scene: Sunday morning and the newspaper is spread out on the kitchen table. Coffee has been made (dogs fed, first washing of the day loaded, dinner taken out of the freezer, last night's washing up done, breakfast served to Littlest who has been sent off to do her homework, school shirt for tomorrow ironed and husband nudged out of bed because his coffee's ready). So there are two adults reading the newspaper. Put yourself in this scenario. Can you read and answer a question at the same time? Think about it. Do you stop reading, put your spoon down because of course you had been enjoying your porridge while reading, put your finger on the paper marking the word you had got to, look up, answer the question, pour yourself more coffee and then get on with the reading? Or are you so in the zone of reading the paper that after five minutes you look up and say 'sorry, did you ask me something?' I don't have to tell you which sex is which, do I?
So, given that my dogs are both male, which is the clever multitasking tail-wagging, lead-detangling one?
This one
or his nephew
Four-legged-friend is the multi-tasker. Which doesn't necessarily mean that he's the clever one. Studies have actually failed to correlate multi-tasking ability with overall IQ. In fact, being overloaded with tasks will lower the IQ in both sexes. And rather more alarmingly, those who believe they are good at multi-tasking have been found to be the opposite - they are very busy achieving very little ... why does that sound so familiar?
All of this leads me to conclude that juggling several balls is good only if they are all travelling in the same direction. And to achieve organised, effective juggling the number of balls needs to be culled. Even if a diminished multi-tasking path is never straight, it would be good to stop racing down it from time to time; to prune further our tasks to maybe one or two essentials, like eating and breathing, and learn how to wag our tails.
It has long been cited that women are better at multi-tasking than men. Various hypotheses attempt to answer why this is the case. Perhaps, it is an evolutionary trait - the care, protection, feeding and all round nurturing of the next generation is perhaps best done by only one of the sexes; leaving the other free to obsess about how fast his chosen method of transport is and whether his ball skills are better than the next man's. Businesses have even attempted to harness this gender bias is multi-tasking ability. Men have linear thinking responding badly to influences that impact and attempt to sidetrack them. Give a man, skilled at job A, an additional job B to perform simultaneously and the time to completion of job A will increase - give him several additional jobs to do and the risk is that he will grind to a halt; job A won't be finished today and depending on the size of the stack of additional jobs, may not be completed this side of next week/next month/next year/ever. Give a man one job to do and you optimise the chance that he will do it well. Women's minds are more multifaceted - they can think linearly but will absorb a myriad of stimuli around them. They can simultaneously do jobs A, B, C, D, E & F. But they will (research has shown it to be true, I am afraid) in doing so, complete job A slower than their singularly tasked male colleagues. Their overall productivity over time might be broader but it will be slower.
Here's a little test to illustrate what I mean - Picture the scene: Sunday morning and the newspaper is spread out on the kitchen table. Coffee has been made (dogs fed, first washing of the day loaded, dinner taken out of the freezer, last night's washing up done, breakfast served to Littlest who has been sent off to do her homework, school shirt for tomorrow ironed and husband nudged out of bed because his coffee's ready). So there are two adults reading the newspaper. Put yourself in this scenario. Can you read and answer a question at the same time? Think about it. Do you stop reading, put your spoon down because of course you had been enjoying your porridge while reading, put your finger on the paper marking the word you had got to, look up, answer the question, pour yourself more coffee and then get on with the reading? Or are you so in the zone of reading the paper that after five minutes you look up and say 'sorry, did you ask me something?' I don't have to tell you which sex is which, do I?
So, given that my dogs are both male, which is the clever multitasking tail-wagging, lead-detangling one?
This one
or his nephew
Four-legged-friend is the multi-tasker. Which doesn't necessarily mean that he's the clever one. Studies have actually failed to correlate multi-tasking ability with overall IQ. In fact, being overloaded with tasks will lower the IQ in both sexes. And rather more alarmingly, those who believe they are good at multi-tasking have been found to be the opposite - they are very busy achieving very little ... why does that sound so familiar?
All of this leads me to conclude that juggling several balls is good only if they are all travelling in the same direction. And to achieve organised, effective juggling the number of balls needs to be culled. Even if a diminished multi-tasking path is never straight, it would be good to stop racing down it from time to time; to prune further our tasks to maybe one or two essentials, like eating and breathing, and learn how to wag our tails.
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