How to work
One thing at a time, on purpose
Multitasking was always inefficient. In these years it becomes genuinely expensive.
4 minSource: Narrated

What changes
Switching between tasks has always carried a cost. What women describe at this stage is that the cost went up and the recovery got slower.
The result is a day that feels frantic and produces very little, which is then read as not coping rather than as too many switches.
What helps
One window, one document, one task. Everything else closed rather than minimized.
Notifications off for the hard hour rather than for the whole day, which never survives contact with reality.
Batching the small things into one block instead of letting them interrupt the big thing.
Finishing something. A day of three completed small things reads very differently at six o'clock than a day of nine half-done ones.
What most women want to know is whether this is permanent. The research on that is more reassuring than the experience of it.
General information, not medical advice. Narrated never diagnoses.
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