Time yourself writing sequential numbers 1 through X as fast as you can in 30 seconds. And note your results.
Then time yourself writing the alphabet A through .... as fast as you can in 30 seconds.
Now, in 30 seconds, write A1, B2, C3, D4.....
You would think it is easy to do this because you have been writing numbers and the alphabet your whole life, but context switching is hard.
I show my students that cognitive abilities declined significantly with lack of oxygen. I have them do jumping jacks while reciting the alphabet backwards. There is often a 50% decrease in speed when they are working out.
I can recite the reverse alphabet almost as fast as forward without the added stress. While working out I can do it with a10% decrease. This leads me to believe that the additional stress can be compensated through drilling.
That would be one more classroom nightmare for me. The only way I can recite the alphabet is by singing that stupid song I learned in grade school. To do so backward, I would first have to sing forwards until I reached the next 'backwards' token, for each and every letter, so jumping jacks or not it would be at least 50% slower.
Even with the song I sometimes get stuck, but I also have a dyslexic mind and absolute hate any alphabet exercises. I would absolutely hate your class (but not you necessarily) and would spend my time in there counting down the school year to never have to go again.
Adeptness at multitasking is inherent to the Genuine Female Experience, at least for those who survive to adulthood. Motherhood is finishing school. (And they're expected to cook. Cooking anything more complicated than grilled cheese is impossible and anybody that can do so is a heretic.)
Men can do it...but we just have to work harder at it to achieve anywhere close to the same results. Some excel. Most burn out.
It's the men that are dropping out of college. Women are doing just fine.
On the other hand I wrote Z25 (uh-oh) and I couldn't spot my mistake until I had the computer write it down too. All the letters were there. But I wrote down 16 twice and I didn't spot the error even afterwards because I was too focused on the letters.
I always tell my wife that I am pretty tired because I was thinking too much, she finds that hard to belive because her job involves moving around and so a job where you sit all day is not tiring.
Now I have the science to prove my point :)
A day where I can shut that out and focus on a couple things intensely usually leaves me feeling energized and happy and like I actually did something productive.
I think a good manager tries to keep his team mostly in the second camp, but sadly means spending more of their own time in the first.
Once she's spent a decade behind a desk, the mere thought of doing anything will sound exhausting to her too. It's unnatural and physically deconditioning. The mind being the only "muscle" you exercise makes its unavailability doubly crippling...it's what gives your physical half its marching orders.
She may be dead on her feet at day's end, but if she saw a car coming at her she'd find the adrenaline to respond and move. Myself, I'd struggle to move past "is that really a car driving down the sidewalk? But cars are supposed to drive on the stre--".
In the past I've done a lot of landscaping work on the side, as well as development remotely. My old man has a landscaping company and obviously needs the help at times.
I gotta say also: if you spend your day cutting/pruning a hedge, cleaning the property up - you actually get to look back at all of that and go "Hell yeah, that looks awesome". I never get that feeling of accomplishment with the dev work. In the past, sure - when I've built something big. But it's just not the same. I can't really explain it more than that.
A couple of years ago I wasn't really paying attention where I was and I was on top of a 10m high Macrocarpa hedge that's... about 120 years old. Anyways, I fell off that straight down on to the footpath. Fortunately there was another (much smaller) hedge in the way that was about 100 years old too and that broke my fall except I parted the hedge so to speak. (We fixed it, wired it up and it grew back together). I managed to get up and walk away, I was very very lucky. Damn though I was wired up so much for the rest of the day, I felt like I could've done 50 marathons!
Since then I have stayed away from doing anything like that - because I am a software engineer really, I just have some skills in landscaping with certain tools but at the end of the day for me personally, getting say an injury from a fall or chainsaw would be devastating to my actual career.
If I spend all day programming (8hr)... I'm really buggered and I simply cannot even brain. Cook dinner? Ugh no. If I mow lawns all day and get home (6-7hr), I'm like "oooh what should I cook for dinner, I'll have this cold beer while I do that and ..." it's like COME ON BRAIN.
Too real. If someone gives me two or more items to get I tell them I'm not going without a list. If it's the end of a day, whatever I'm trying to remember just gets pushed out after fifteen minutes.
A broader version of this is only working on a single project for the whole day, or the whole week (if you have multiple projects to work on).
My biggest issue is when I use 100% of that context-switching capacity at work and then have little to give after work. It's cyclical that I do this well, then poorly, then well again. But it does feel like I'm doing this significantly better than I was 3-5 years ago.
I should note that depending on the level of empathy or understanding of this situation, and argument can ensue after this further piling on the stress.
So I think things like this are really important to understand, and appreciate. This is real!