How to Optimize Your Brain to Multitask (Kind Of…)

Public opinion persists that women have a biological edge as super-efficient multitaskers… but is this ideal actually supported by evidence? 

On episode 4 of The Superwoman Code we dive into the myth of multi-tasking and the female brain. Is the female brain wired to multitask better than men’s brains are? What exactly does multitasking do to our brain? Are we more efficient when we multitask or are we just kidding ourselves? 

Without giving too much away… turns out that the idea that women are these amazing multitaskers isn’t actually true. What it is is a cultural implication made to, you know, make women feel like they really do have to do it all. It’s not that we’re not good multitaskers, it’s that we’re doing (in general) a higher workload than our male counterparts.

In this episode, we’ll also dive into how we can harness our hormones to help us be more efficient with our brain power; without overwhelming ourselves.

And… as an important note; it’s not just in our home lives that these assumptions persist. These assumptions can influence the allocation of administrative tasks at the office –  tasks like taking minutes and organizing meetings should not be allocated based on gender. Governments need to dismantle these myths within their policies. Children add work that cannot be easily multitasked. Women need affordable, high-quality, and widely available childcare. Men also need access to flexible work, parental leave and childcare to share in this labour, and protections to ensure they aren’t penalized for taking time to share in the care. We truly need to do better in our assumptions of “doing it all”.

Research Links:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0140371

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=10807

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22308888

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23722949

https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2Fs13423-015-0907-3

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053811916300441

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797613504438

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9799625

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15721748/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11162946

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24418360