buter's BABY blog

I was just thinking of doing something... but wait, there was that other thing.. Oh and right, I had to just ...

Apparently, if you get interrupted while doing something your brain sets some kind of flag, telling you to remember that you got interrupted, and that triggers you to keep going back to check on it later so according to these people you actually will complete interrupted tasks more fully than those that you do all at once. Apparently this can be used to "explain" the current "craze" for multitasking. You work better when interrupted, therefore you should be interrupted more often, with more work, because when you're interrupted you have a greater chance of completing the work you were interrupted doing. Or something.

In other news they have discovered that the effect described above is totally nonexistent in males when it comes to housework.

Oh, ouch, that was a snide comment, no really DTM is great with housework. It's just that I've noticed if he (or other males I know) gets distracted in the middle of something, (generally anything that isn't paid work) it just sort of gets left by the wayside indefinitely. Whereas that interruptus effect is always running in most females I know. Keeping track of X number of things that need to be kept track of, it's just always running. What's more it's usually nested, so right now I've got the following set of instructions pootling along:

• parents are on holidays, thus
  
  • check their watering system is working (1-off)
  • check their mail for bills that need paying while they're away (3 or 4 times) thus
    
    • go to their house thus
      
      • on the way go to Northside Produce market requiring
        
        • stop at ATM for cash then
        • drop off in-laws mail collected while they were away and then on to parents' place so
        • have access to broadband thus
          
          • update blog
          • download pocket and pendant chap 12 then
      • return to in-laws as they weren't awake before then and
      • on the way home drop in on Becca and Ed and Louise requiring
        
        • pick up some lunch and flowers and
        • call DTM so he can meet me there.