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Life

15th May 2015

Study shows if it’s men or women who have the best attention span and ability to multi-task

Phones off

Paul Moore

Phones off.

There’s no denying that technology has improved our lives immeasurably but iPhones, laptops and TV have also made certain peoples attention span resemble the dog from Up.

Squirrel!

Squirel

We all have one friend that can’t spend five minutes without checking their smart phone and it seems that this addiction to technology is detrimental to their attention span.

Seriously though, it’s like their iPhone is glued to their hands.

Researchers say that in the year 2000 the average person could stay fully focused for 12 seconds, but this has now fallen to just eight.

To put this into context, the average goldfish can keep its brain engaged for nine seconds.

Nemo

While this isn’t a big surprise, we were interested to read that 38% of the men studied showed a higher aptitude for multi-tasking when compared to just 29% of women.

See ladies, men are more than capable of doing multiple things at a time.

For example, I’m currently writing this article while simultaneously proving Pythagorean theorem, modelling scuba diving gear, chatting with Pat Mustard and eating a rotisserie chicken.

There’s a very obvious reason for this interesting result though and it’s because…hey that dog has a puffy tail!

PuffyTail

On the other hand, the survey also revealed that women have superior attention spans and are more likely to finish repetitive tasks through to the end.

Fair play to all you ladies, you have the patience of saints whereas most guys just tend to say ‘feck this, who wants a pint?’

science

Hat Tip to The Daily Mail