MultiTasking

In today's business climate it seems like the term Multi Tasking is all the rage. Everyone wants everyone else to respond/reply almost instantly and even at work the company may request/require that you multitask. 
I have found in my world that sometimes multitasking is a good thing and like so many other items, sometimes it isn't.  Driving to work this week I saw a women who provided an excellent point for the positive view of multitasking.  She was (A) walking her child to the local school, while (B) also walking the dog along with them, while (C) swinging her arms and getting her morning exercise workout.  Now that is creative use of time and multitasking.  In the next block I observed a driver (I won't reveal male or female) that was driving one handed while attempting to work on what appeared to be a BlackBerry phone, and, read the paper stuck up on the steering wheel. This was DRIVING, or maybe I should say swerving around, and not stopped at a traffic light!  Bad choice there just waiting to start an accident.
Now my wife, and many female friends, argue that women are far superior to multitasking than men - and there is at least one famous college study (by a woman of course) that documents several reasons for this claim.

• Women's brains are programmed to think and work differently than men's.
• Women are intellectually superior to men.
• Women from an early age are given multi dimensional tasks while men seem to prefer focused tasks with single focus activities.
• Women just practice this more than men do.

Now I'm not at all agreeing with this theory, but just reporting it as one of the reasons that women seem so much more inclined to multitasking activities than most men are.
One thing I feel very sure of: Multitasking, as with most other activities can, when used to excess or at the wrong times, and result in terrible results and actually hurt your situation more than help you to gain that time you are attempting to save by doing different things at the same time.
As for me, I feel comfortable reporting that I can occasionally multitask without a problem, like walking and chewing gum, or drinking beer and watching a sporting event, but if you get much more complicated than that my tired old brain seems to rebel and I find that I seem to do a very poor job of all of the tasks I am attempting to combine and accomplish. 
These are my thoughts today, what are yours?
Steve