How can you be bad at multitasking if it's not real?

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I worked at a Taco Bell for a while. They had me at the "first window": typing in the order and taking the money. The order was sent to the line, and the "second window" made sure it was correct and gave it to the customers.

There were times when that was incredibly overwhelming...plus, they expected you to do the dishes, too. It took FOREVER. Looking back, I don't know how I managed it at all.



I was talking about this with one of my professors (now colleagues) once. She said that she doesn't like to "attempt" to multitask either, for many of the reasons you mentioned. This was when I told her about my AS, and she said there is nothing wrong with doing one thing at a time...which was really nice to hear.

What about reading WP while playing fruit ninja? That is lots of attention-switching, I think. I do that a lot. Just one or the other is not enough for me.

That's quite a lot of task switching. I almost always get my flappy bird high scores while I'm watching a youtube video.

I suck at multitasking, and I hate it when people demand it of me. For crying out loud, it's just something I cannot do.

Sometimes when I'm cooking I'll have the fry pan on, a saucepan boiling some rice, plus I have to chop up some vegetables and then --

the house is on fire.

Basically, I'm just very slow at switching between tasks to be able to cook my dinner very smoothly. Good thing I have an electric frying pan. I just turn it off when I'm worried about burning my dinner.

I know other people who can cook like this as though it's no effort at all.

I get bored at work if I don't multitask.

Management is bitching at me too because they want to track the billable hours to the US government instead of my estimates.

I concur. The only time I'm really paying attention to someone is when my face is buried in a piece of paper drawing geometrical shapes. I find I actually listen better when I'm not visually focused on the person speaking.