Multitask

Do you ever have one of those weeks/periods where a particular word keeps jumping into your consciousness? I often do, and this week it was "multi-tasking." In conversation, reading, news, it kept appearing, and not in a scientific way, but in a "mothers have to multitask!" and "I can text and drive, other people just can't multitask!" way. Which is, to put it mildly, fuckingbullshit. No one can multitask. Our brains just don't work that way, and it's been proven over and over. But the most distractible people I know claim they are most capable. As for those online assuring us, I have even lower expectations.

Sure, I can pull out a spoon while I pour my tea, I am not really concentrating on either very well, but it doesn't matter. Today, waiting for the light to change, I noticed the opposite direction driver looking at his lap in a way that suggested he was texting. When the light changed, and I moved out into the intersection, he didn't budge, so I did a nice Michigan turn (one car taking a left ahead of oncoming traffic at the beginning of a green was expected there.) I know better than to do so in Utah, normally. As I was in front of him, he finally looked up, and shook his finger at me. But I figured, if you're texting, I'm turning. He was so enthralled, he didn't realize how long he'd been still.

The tone of debate over the cell phone/texting while driving issue is taking on much the same key as the drunk driving issue when I was very young. The laws where mostly already there on DWI, but were winked at by some cops, and still not much of a social stigma attached to having a few drinks, then taking the wheel. Drunks were still funny, without irony or conditions. But it changed, as I grew up I felt the shift from social acceptance to calling the evil what it was. My father rarely drank, but always got (even more) belligerent when he did, and always insisted on driving (when normally he preferred my mother to drive.) My sister-in-law was hit by a drunk driver the day she found out she was pregnant for the first time, while I was visiting them, age ten. She and fetus were fine, and I never drove with alcohol in my system, in no small part because of these two examples.

We are not quite at the tipping point with those who believe they are wonderful multitaskers. Soon, I hope, but not yet. And no, women are not better at it than men. No one is good at it. Anyone who thinks they are are certainly worse, and much more dangerous. It saves no time, and costs and costs.

One thing at a time. It's a virtue.