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In between holding down a couple of careers, wiping runny noses, sitting on a handful of do-gooding committees, trying to look passably well-groomed and attempting to tame a garden that constantly threatens to turn into Sleeping Beauty's, my best friend and I occasionally find a moment for a brief e-mail exchange. (We live just two streets away from each other, yet hardly spend more time face-to-face than we did when 200 miles separated us.)
Among the 500 or so e-mails that land in my inbox each week, there's an inspirational thought which I sent to my pal for light relief recently. It read: "The best way to get things done is to do one task at a time."
"Hah!", she wrote back at 11 pm after putting her daughter to bed, leafing through some paint charts, folding the laundry and finishing a freelance commission. "Obviously written by a man!".
Whether we call ourselves jugglers or multitaskers, the more we manage to do at once, the more we congratulate ourselves. We iron with a phone tucked under our chin. Grab a sandwich and eat it while working. I'm ashamed to admit I've even been known to snack 'n' drive – once being forced to change gears unexpectedly with my hand in a bag of lobster-flavoured crisps.
"Multitasking" was a phrase first minted (in Silicon Valley) to describe computers that could run more than one program at a time. But in the 21st century, we've all become human multitaskers. And, no question, women are better at it than men. Studies have shown that women use both hemispheres of the brain – while men tend to use one, so they're more "compartmentalised", tending to focus on one thing at a time.
Bestselling "I Don't Know How She Does It" author Allison Pearson sums it up: "We're wired differently. It must be something to do with Early Woman being a gatherer – needing to pick berries while keeping an ear out for the kids and planning what we're going to have for dinner at that cave party a week from Tuesday."
However, research suggests that multitasking might be bad for our memories and our wellbeing. The stress of doing too many things at once can not only strain the brain, but set us up for a raft of physical problems, too.
Dr David Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan who specialises in cognition and perception, insists, "Chronic multitasking over the years poses a strong risk for ultimate brain damage. As we force ourselves to bounce from task to task, we generate stress. Body and mind gear up to cope by releasing adrenaline. This powerful medicine is good for a crisis – but on an ongoing basis, it's hard on the brain and body."
Stress hormones divert energy from the part of our brain that forms memory (including the hippocampus) to the parts of the body needed for the "fight-or-flight" response. Long-term, this stress can lead to permanent shrinkage of the hippocampus.
What's more, Dr Meyer observed that multitaskers are losing the ability to concentrate. Viz my friend Kate's admission: "I spend more and more time in the office each morning 'going round in my basket' like a dog settling, before I can crack on with my day."
According to Dr Marcel Just, who's researching ageing at Carnegie Mellon University in the US, that's because "there's only so much mental capacity to go around." If you run too many programs at once on a computer, it tends to crash. Ditto human memory – which is what regularly happens to another of my friends Manic Janet, working mother of five-year-old twins: "I was ironing a shirt and the phone went, and then I looked out of the window and thought I'd go and pick a bunch of flowers. I then smelled burning coming from the kitchen – and I'd burnt an iron-shaped hole in my best Nicole Farhi shirt."
Multitaskers also tend to sleep badly, which not only impacts on our immune system, but can increase the likelihood of other stress-related health problems like heart disease.
It's time to reclaim the idea of mono-tasking, that quaint idea of doing one thing at a time. It might just turn out to save our health, wellbeing and our relationships. (And I might get to spend time with my best friend, instead of typing messages to her at 5am).
HOW TO UN-MULTITASK
Not all multitaskers are created equal, so if you want to detox your tasking routine, it helps to take a customised approach. Make one small change at a time. If you give up multitasking completely, you'll be on overload again before you know it.
• The Culture Vulture So much to read (and watch, and listen to) – and so little time. You skim through the newspaper while watching "Desperate Housewives" and beside your bed is a teetering pile of Sunday supplements and mail-order catalogues that you only really attend to when it avalanches to the floor.
The Detox Will the world be any different if you only buy one Sunday paper? Each morning, earmark one or two TV programmes that you'd really like to watch that night and have a long, indulgent girlie chat with a friend rather than squeeze her in while channel-surfing.
• The Office Juggler You pride yourself on being able to cope with whatever your day (or boss) throws at you – but in reality, projects pile up and only get finished when there's a deadline. You probably get in early and stay late, too, to keep on top of your e-mails.
The Detox First, clear your desk so that it's easier to focus on each project. (A carefully-labelled hanging file under your desk is better than a mountain of folders.) Block out periods of time to work on specific projects. But never go more than 90 minutes without a break, because the brain needs time to recharge. Set aside 15-minute chunks, a few times a day, to deal with e-mail, rather than keeping it permanently open – and get a spam filter, so you're not spending time deleting irrelevant info.
• The Domestic Perfectionist You bend over backwards to make sure your home looks like something out of one of those glossy homes magazines you subscribe to. You have a pile of vintage curtains just waiting to be turned into gorgeous cushions, and spend hours spritzing your linen with lavender water. But there are piles of things behind the sofa because you never quite finish tidying one space before moving on to the next – and that mountain of ironing just keeps getting higher.
The Detox Remind yourself that the homes in magazines don't look like that for more than about five minutes. (It takes a stylist and much grooming to get camera-ready, and invariably, just out of shot, there's a vast pile of junk. If not, the place is inhabited by aliens.) Slow down, take a breath and ask yourself: Which is more important, a perfect home, or health and happiness? Buy less, so there's less to tidy. Try folding clothes when they're straight out of the drier, to save time at the ironing board. And why not pay someone to make those pretty cushions for you?
• The Crazed Cook Your kitchen walls are lined with cookbooks and Saturdays are spent dashing around town seeking out tamarind paste. You're constantly tearing recipes out of magazines – but never seem to get round to creating them. In fact, the last time you spent all evening in the kitchen, stirring, pouring, flambéing and crisping with your blowtorch you were ready to collapse.
The Detox Sign up for the Slow Food movement (slowfood.com). Or think like a Frenchwoman: buy the starter, or dessert, so that you're less frazzled and can actually enjoy your friends' company. Enlist their help – dressing the salad, pouring the wine. Have a ruthless cull of your cookbooks, keeping only the books that you refer to time and again. Author Shirley Conran was right when she said that life really is too short to stuff a mushroom.
