Should Multi-tasking Be Encouraged, Or Taken to Task?
Much has been said and written about the multi-tasking woman. Our twenty-first century culture almost celebrates her. How does she do it? Or, should the question be why must she?
The female brain has been found to be better able to process a baby’s cry while also cooking dinner and checking email, for example*. A male brain is typically less able to multi-task in quite that manner. The right and left sides of a woman’s brain are thought to communicate more fluidly than those of a (typical) man’s brain, making it easier to simultaneously take in and respond to both linear and non-linear/more emotional inputs. Multi-tasking comes naturally to women, sure, but what if it really isn’t optimal for getting things done well? Should marketers feed into the frenzy or help women feel less tasked somehow?**
Ruth Pennebaker’s fun piece, “The Mediocre Multitasker,” in yesterday’s New York Times floated a reason or two for giving good old “uni-tasking” more love. As she reported, a Stanford University study found that multi-taskers are “just lousy at everything.” One of the study’s investigators, Clifford I. Nass, found this to be shocking, since the research had hoped to identify the traits in multi-taskers that made them so successful. Just as Pennebaker responded to this “shock” with a wink and a nudge, are we supposed to be surprised about this?
Yet, therein lies an opportunity for any business or organization professing to want to serve women. Instead of trying to make your task one that women will slip into their already multi-everything days, how can what you deliver make it at least feel like you’ve simplified their lives a tad? Sure, mobile device and Facebook ads find her where she is, but can you help her not have to be there so much? Seamless service delivery for meals or house-cleaning are examples, as are good old fashioned full-service gas stations and human-answered help lines. OK – it is all sounding a bit retro. But, that may be the point.
We used to only get phone calls on a landline and no kitchen computer (not even a laptop), so we could actually JUST make and then eat dinner. We used to only learn of discounts or coupons via a newspaper circular, so we focused on the task of finding them – and could then do so productively. We used to just drive when we were in the car – remember that? How unusual it would be to deliver a de-tasking solution that might help people enjoy one task so much they put other interruptions aside.
As Clifford Nass, again, so succinctly put it in Pennebaker’s piece:
“I was sure they had some secret ability. But it turns out that high multi-taskers are suckers for irrelevancy.”
Would the classic multi-tasking mom, who has to stay “on” in her 24/7 world, notice a brand or product that was more relevant in the sea of irrelevancy? I think so. Think about reversing rather than joining the flow, and yours may continue to be a task worth doing.
* Helen Fisher’s The First Sex and Louane Brizendine’s The Female Brain are good resources on this.
**Kelley Murray Skoloda’s book, Too Busy To Shop, offers great advice for reaching/truly serving the “multi-minding” woman.
