I was almost ran over last week. This was for once, entirely not my own fault. I was on my silly little mental health walk last Wednesday with my sausage dog Pepper, walking at a speed I like to call ambling and others call barely moving.
We were having a lovely time, looking at all the Commonwealth Games signs and sculptures. I could see a woman on her phone, bundling two children into the car while throwing their ipads at them presumably to keep them quiet and entertained in the car. I decided to cross the road as my dog likes to bark at every single person we pass and wanted to save them and myself from this. However the woman jumped in the car and pulled off without even looking, coming straight at me.
I had to do a sort of weird jump lunge out of the way and she didn’t even stop, just shouting sorry out of the window. I was both shocked and angry that she didn’t have the courtesy to stop. When I thought about it a little more on the remainder of the walk – this only happened because she was multi-tasking. She may have felt in control, but sorting the children, having the phone conversation and driving was obviously too much for her attention span, and it could have had serious consequences.
You may think you can multi-tasking but scientifically studies have shown that we can’t. Multi-tasking is a myth and it will destroy your concentration, take much longer to complete tasks and mean that your performance suffers in the exam.
Instead of multi-tasking, try spaced learning. Focus on one task at one time, then come back to it a couple of days later and learn it again. This should help you move the information in to long term memory. I recommend that you work something like this. On a monday start to look at learning outcomes 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3. Focus on one learning outcome at a time in that day. Once you have gone through your notes, do not look at these again until Wednesday or Thursday and then quiz yourself over these outcomes. You should find this creates an improvement in what you can remember.
Remember you are not a circus act, so why are you engaging in mental juggling with multitasking? You don’t want to drop the balls!
