Women, the matchless masterful multitaskers!

Published on: September 1, 2022

Call the agent to renew my car insurance. Check.

Pick up gifts for Rekha aunt's birthday. Check.

Update the sales presentation for the meeting next week. Check.

Fix a spa appointment at my friend’s new salon. Check.

Going through a woman’s to-do list is like running a mental marathon. From running errands to running business empires and everything in between, women truly are experts at multitasking. And when contrasted with men – who maintain unidimensional, one-at-a-time task lists, this is the most consistent difference between the genders. It reflects not only in their brain structures, perception and preferences, but most fundamentally on how men and women run their lives. 

Men structure their lives in a linear fashion: their task list is ranked in order of priority, first things first, complete the job at hand before taking on the next. Women simultaneously pursue several tasks. Each task lingers over a longer time span, and the outcomes are no slaves to timelines, since the attention devoted to each task is constantly adjusted to based on what comes up – what else must be weaved into the time stream.

For women, this guarantees the most efficient method to maneuver within the “many-hats” way of life. As they shape-shift across their roles at home, at work and at leisure, it allows them to execute more tasks, only less predictably. In fact, not doing more than one thing at a time can make women feel uneasy. If she’s only cooking dinner, she feels a vague void; she’s constantly thinking about the other things on her list. But if she can respond to the joke on the family WhatsApp group chat, sort tomorrow’s outfit while cooking dinner, and help her kid with homework, now that’s a better use of time.

This juggling can make men jittery. To them, it looks like herding cattle: surely you can’t make much progress in all this disorganized, unstructured chaos – “How can you get anything right, when nothing has your complete attention?” Their conclusion is that women cannot focus. On their part, women feel sympathy for men. It seems the poor dears can only handle one thing at a time, which is inefficient and incomprehensible to women.

Let me share a quick example: Suppose a man says to his wife he is just going out to the pharmacy. For women, “I’m going to the pharmacy” is surely an incomplete sentence. They know the sentence ought to end with “and do you need anything from there?” It’s a natural feminine reflex to check if the clan requires anything. Most women are aware of this difference and actually nudge men by completing the sentence for them.

“Good!” the wife says. “Can you pick up a few loaves of brown bread from the bakery? It’s on the ground floor of the mall across the pharmacy.”

“I’m not going to the mall. I’m going to the pharmacy”, he will probably protest under his breath.

“The bakery is right across the street!” she’ll reply, astounded. “It’s on the way.”

Comprehend: All he wanted was to have a quick pit stop at the pharmacy, pick up what he wanted and come home back in time before his cricket match began. Now the wife’s demand is going to derail his clockwork precision. For men, requests like these come in the way, not on the way.

On their part, men are particularly sparing about asking women for similar errands – though women generally want to help them out. For women, looking for and grouping together additional tasks add to their efficiency and seem a worthwhile use of their time. If a man asks a woman to pick up his dry cleaning while she’s out, she thinks, Brilliant! Together with the letters I need to post and the grocery shopping that’s due, I’ve got a full day’s job that is worth stepping into the car and driving to the city.

To women, it barely makes sense to get in the car and drive around just for one errand. Until the clan needs something from the other end of the city, the letters and the grocery shopping will have to wait.

And between the two different approaches, there isn’t any right or wrong; there is a case to be made for both. While men prioritize, women maximize. To her, every task on her to-do list is equally important and must be eventually crossed off – might as well be now.

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