……..My mind, I reasoned, is about the size of a soccer ball — give or take a few centimetres. Yet I was continuing to pump stuff into it as if it was one of those giant inflatable human-hamster zorb balls that people inexplicably like to roll around in.
Worse, I was trying to perform two dozen different tasks with my swollen zorb; was it any wonder stuff was falling out?
Apparently not, according to Professor Michael Saling from Victoria’s Austin Health who, I suspect, boasts a brain as ordered as an Ikea sock divider.
“This expansion of information in our age has happened so fast, so expediently, that it’s bringing us face to face with our brains’ limitations,” he explained in one of the six international newspapers I read online every day.
“Because devices we use have perfect memories there is almost an expectation building that we too should have perfect memories.”
Humans, he pointed out, can only process a maximum of seven things at once.
Only seven! No wonder my brain was imploding. I’m the mistress of multi-tasking — there are never fewer than 10 tabs open on my computer and cooking dinner is dovetailed with homework supervision, laundry folding, listening to a podcast, eyebrow plucking (not over the pots), phone calls and internet banking. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done a single thing from start to finish. I can’t even hug my kids without breaking off to remind them of something they have to do.
In response to this demonic need to multitask, life has become shorter, sharper, bite-sized and brisk.
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