The Brain Rules: Why the Brain Can't Multitask

I do know people who are able to multitask very successfully.

All of them are female.

There has to be a lesson in that.

Kind Regards....

i usually agree with most of your posts sparkstation but i gotta object to that one.

haven't you ever stood in a supermarket queue behind a woman?

the poor little things can't even queue up and get their money out at the same time.

first, they got to queue up while they stare into space for five minutes.

then, they have to bag up their little goodies while the checkout person and the queue behind them wait patiently for them to complete that complex task.

then, they have to wait for the checkout person to tell them how much they owe.

then, and only then, are they able to search for their little purses and scramble around in the bottom of various secret pockets searching for a penny that they put there last whenever.

then, when they can't find that, they have to close up their change purse and find a note or a bill to pay with.

then, they have to go back in their change purse to see if they have the odd bit of change that will round out the total to an even number in their neat little minds.

then, they have to ask the checkout person if that bit of change will help at all.

then, when the checkout person shrugs with a yawn that it doesn't really matter, offended lady person huffily puts her change away in a secret pocket somewhere in the inner vaults of her little purse.

then, finally, having negotiated the difficult obstacle course of paying for a sandwich, she gathers up her entourage and leaves.

supermarkets have brought in all kinds of technology to speed up the queueing process but they'll never overcome the "i'll-do-one-thing-at-a-time-and-i'll-do-it-in-my-own-time,-thank-you-very-much." mindset of the female shopper.

check it out next time you're in a supermarket queue.

Hi,

I observed both procedures in women:

very often one action and then the next: but this is very often interrupted to talk to somebody with varying topics,

very often driving and talking and telling children what to do or not and searching in some some hidden or not pockets for lipsticks ...

Both is supported by the theory that women had to watch in community for the children, the ill and the old persons of the community in our hunter- and gatherer history (10thousand to 4 million years ago).

The men were out hunting and had to focus on one and only one object and be quiet.

The women had to communicate permanently with the other women and with the children so that any unusual detected event would be known to the community immediately: saving them from many attacks.

RHABE

If you can reinstall this in our modern behaviour then many of our society problems may vanish!

I would point out that I am not sexist.

I just located these on the Internet, so the pictures must be true:

As may be clearly seen from the two reputable diagrams, there appears to be a vast difference between male and female brain wiring.

This would indubitably reflect in the ability to multi-task, both in the respective brains, and elsewhere.

Kind Regards....

Bull!

At the very least the statement is incomplete. It does not consider the conscious functioning of mind at the same time it may be thinking about another problem sub-consciously.

That is evidenced by the phenomenon of suddenly,in the middle of one mind operation, coming up with a thought solving a problem completely different.

Further, some might not consider of the same order, but solving some problems, especially those of motion, actual or mental, require us to think about the motions of two separate things; this most obvious when we think about contradictory ideas or motions. One might not think of two cars converging on your own car at different speeds and angles and your decision making in that regard as conceptual, but it is.

At base, the universe we live in is made up of all sorts of processes moving in all sorts of modes, directions, speeds, even the small part of that which is our interaction directly with the things, and persons and minds, immediately present.

That of course requires multiple and simultaneous mental operations all the time.

j.

Instructions for concentrating upon 12 rules one at a time to increase brain power?

I have always thought that multi-tasking is atleast somewhat a myth. People can think/perform multiple activities but there is still only a possible 100% of available concentration.

If you are walking and chewing gum, that can easily be achieved (for most people) because neither activity requires full attention. But if you are driving your car on the highway while trying to write an email on a "Crackberry" then you will have problems because you are sacrificing the necessary attention for the first task so that you can do the second task. The first task won't be complete nearly as well as it could be.

I don't know about women being able to multitask better than men, atleast none of the ones I know or have ever met in 27 years.