The Female Brain Still Juggles All the Balls

Part of the female brain believes that its greatest ability is being able to juggle all the balls in the air at the same time.  It use to mean the mastery of running a household – cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, feeding the kids, changing diapers, finding lost socks and shoes, shopping and greeting a husband when he returned from work with a martini in hand and a pot roast dinner on the table. Part of this master juggler was probably a myth (especially the martini and pot roast part), but women learned long ago that doubling up or combining tasks at the same time was the only way to stay ahead.

As more and more women with families entered the workforce the juggling act became even more refined.  Thank the Lord for “mother’s little helpers”.

Women can juggle even better. They can now “multitask” with technology tools.  Let’s see, there’s the TV remote, the blackberry, the cell phone, the computer/lap top, the digital camera, the  webcam, the iPhone, the iPod, the Nannycam, the CDs and DVDs, the garage remote, the MP3, the GPS system, and all the up load and download gadgets, and less we forget QVC and PayPal (my apologies if I missed some others that life could not function without).

There seems to be some argument in the gender circles as to whether women multitask more than men and if they are better multitaskers than men. This is an endless debate, but here’s an interesting piece of research from Integrated Media Management Inc. They started by collecting data on the differences between men and women who watched TV and simultaneously used an Internet-connected computer.

Data Results of Simultaneous Users:

• Women ages 15-48 spent 17.5 minutes vs. 15.7 minutes for men each day
• Women ages 30-39 spent more that twice the amount of time (23.3 minutes) as men (10.6 minutes)

Integrated Media Measurement concluded that women are more inclined to multitask than men. Even though men are strongly connected to sports Web and TV programming, women multitask more due to family and professional obligations.  After age 40, both men and women become similar in their TV/computer activity.

I wonder what the results would be now, if they looked all the combinations of technology gizmo’s women keep at their fingertips.

There should be no surprises here. Women just have more things to keep track of.

I remember watching a mother who had invited me to her home to discuss a project.  While I sat at her kitchen counter we discussed this project while she was baking cookies for a school event and dealing with one dog, two cats and one three-year-old.  She had the multitasking down to a science.  Even when the phone rang all she had to do was look up at the TV screen mounted on the living room wall and it showed the caller ID in the upper corner of the screen. While the events were not exactly conducive to having the best of meetings, this was a busy mother.

After all, nothing much has changed. The female brain still has to do what she has to do to keep all of the balls in the air at the same time to stay ahead.

by Joyce Hansen