We all do it, and some say that women can do it better than men. Yes, multi-tasking. There has doubtless been some empirical research on this topic, but if you’d prefer a more engaging way of discovering the truth or otherwise of who’s best at multitasking, as opposed to reading a dry academic paper, then check out this neat interactive Infographic from the folk over at OpenSite. They describe the test as follows:
If you’re like most people, you probably find yourself doing two things at once pretty regularly—talking on the phone while reading an email, skyping relatives as you cook dinner, munching on toast as you commute to work; the multitasking in your life can seem both unavoidable and necessary if you want to get everything done. However, even though everyone multitasks, very few people seem to realize that, in fact, your brain isn’t as efficient in multitasking as it seems. The reality is, everyone’s brain slows down considerably when trying to juggle multiple tasks—and some people’s brains slow down much more than others. If you really think your multitasking skills are a cut above the rest, the only way to know for sure is to see how your brain’s speed compares to that of other multitaskers. When people talk about “multitasking,” what’s really being referred to is one’s ability to switch between different activities, as well as juggling multiple actions at one time. So how can these things be efficiently measured? With a multitask test of course. Test your tasking abilities and see how they stack up against others: Check out the following interactive multitasking exercise, and see how well your brain performs when it juggles multiple tasks—your results could surprise you!
Try it out and see your test results while contributing to the overall data. Probably best to do this whilst sober so not to bring the averages down!
