Multitasking: The Key to Mothers Doing It All?
By Carly Erickson
Mothers, we have all experienced trying to finish up a work email while browning hamburger for supper, filling Junior’s sippy cup, and telling Fido to stop barking at the UPS driver. Or, at least some similar chaos. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, many of us have moved our work office to the home dinner table, all while pulling double duty as a childcare provider and even a distance learning teacher to our kids. Multitasking in motherhood seems to have become more of a means of survival than a means of efficiency, but is multitasking the key to mothers doing it all?
Multitasking is defined as the performance of two (or more) tasks simultaneously. While you can probably walk and chew gum at the same time, is it really possible to carry on a meaningful conversation with your spouse while simultaneously typing an email on your laptop? The short answer is no. MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller states that "people can’t multitask very well, and when people say they can, they’re deluding themselves”. He goes on to explain that a better word to use in these “multitasking” situations is “task-switching”. This means that when we think we are multitasking; we really are just rapidly switching back and forth from one task to another.
Task-switching comes at a mental cost. Task-switching is bad for our productivity, critical thinking, ability to concentrate, and makes us more error-prone. Not only does it diminish our ability to do the task at hand, but it also impacts our ability to remember things later. This was further demonstrated by a study out of the University of Alabama that looked at students' use of technology (Facebook, email, etc.) while doing schoolwork. They found students spent over two hours a day attempting to multitask while studying. Furthermore, they found that students that reported spending more time using these technologies while studying had poorer grades than those who did not. They believed these results were likely due to the brain being overloaded, preventing deep, long-term learning, directly as a result of our limited working memory capacity. Our working memory has “a limited capacity store [only four or five items] for retaining information for a brief period while performing mental operations on that information. Simplifying it, our brain is made up of a complex web of neurons, essentially phone lines, communicating a task or thought to memory. If these neurons (phone lines) are being tied up by one task, another task (caller) would get a busy signal, unless the current task (caller) was put on hold (task-switching). This means we can’t make memories for more than one task (thought) at a time. For more information about working memory, visit the Working Memory Model.
So, what about using different phone lines or different parts of the brain? We can ask two different parts of the brain to do things at the same time when doing two unrelated tasks. This is why you can walk and chew gum at the same time. However, even dividing our attention between unrelated tasks can be problematic. A good example of this involves research out of the University of Utah looking at cell phone use while driving compared to drunk driving. They found “when drivers were talking on either a hand-held or hands-free cell phone, their braking reactions were delayed, and they were involved in more traffic accidents than when they were not conversing on cell phones”. The found that driving while talking on the phone, regardless of if it were hands-free or not, could be as bad as drunk driving, increasing the risk of car accidents. This is especially interesting because current laws only outlaw handheld phones while driving, not talking on the phone in general.
What are busy people to do?
The best thing to do is to stop trying to multitask! Closeout social media, text messaging, and email while working. Try to eliminate distractions, use earplugs or noise-canceling headphones, send the kiddos outside to play. Focus on one task, complete it, and move on to the next. For other tips on how to be more effective at work click here. Finally, when you do have to multitask, acknowledge what you are doing. Multiple studies have found individuals who perceive an activity as multitasking are more engaged and consequently outperformed those who perceived the same activity as a single task. That being said, it’s also important to acknowledge the cognitive fatigue associated with multitasking, or rather task-switching. While it may seem like multi-tasking is the key to mothers doing it all, at the end of the day, it is only further contributing to the mental and physical fatigue of motherhood.
Resources
Mcleod, S. (2012). Working Memory Model. Retrieved June 06, 2020, from https://www.simplypsychology.org/working memory.html.
Rampton, J. (2017, December 29). Work Smarter, Not Harder: 10 Ways to Be More Effective at Work. Retrieved June 6, 2020, from https://www.inc.com/john-rampton/work-smarter-not-harder-10-ways-to-be-more-effective-at-work.html.
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Shaw, J. (2017). The memory illusion: remembering, forgetting, and the science of false memory. London: Random House Books.
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Westbrook, J. I., Raban, M. Z., Walter, S. R., & Douglas, H. (2018). Task errors by emergency physicians are associated with interruptions, multitasking, fatigue and working memory capacity: a prospective, direct observation study. BMJ quality & safety, 27(8), 655–663. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2017-007333.