Torque Theory: Cognitive Load, Decision Fatigue & Staying Sharp

Why multitasking myths increase risk in high-stakes work

In motorsport, no one mistakes chaos for competence.

Drivers don’t tune engines, analyse data, manage radio chatter, and make race-winning decisions all at once. Pit crews don’t “just juggle” when seconds matter. Workshops don’t expect safe diagnostics from technicians whose attention is being pulled in five directions simultaneously.

High-performance environments already understand a basic truth: decision quality depends on cognitive conditions.

Yet outside the pit lane or workshop floor, we still celebrate multitasking—particularly in women—as a strength. The result is a quiet contradiction: the very behaviour we engineer out of high-risk systems is praised as professionalism in everyday work.

That contradiction carries a cost.

Multitasking isn’t a skill — it’s a cognitive strain

Cognitive psychology is clear on this point. Human brains do not perform multiple conscious tasks at the same time. What we call “multitasking” is usually rapid task-switching: shifting attention back and forth between tasks, contexts, and demands.

Every switch comes with a penalty:

• attention must disengage and re-orient,

• working memory is partially flushed,

• error-checking weakens,

• mental fatigue accumulates.

These costs apply to everyone. There is no reliable evidence that women are biologically better at multitasking. What differs is exposure.

Decision fatigue: when sharp thinking erodes

In high-stakes domains—aviation, medicine, control rooms—research consistently shows that frequent interruptions and fragmented attention increase:

• procedural deviations,

• missed steps,

• near-misses,

• shallow checking.

As cognitive load accumulates, people don’t slow down—they simplify. Decision-making shifts from deliberate analysis to faster heuristics: “good enough” judgments that preserve throughput but reduce sensitivity to anomalies and edge cases.

In motorsport terms, this is the equivalent of running on instinct when the data no longer fits cleanly on the dash.

The danger isn’t incompetence. It’s depletion.

Why the multitasking myth survives

The idea that some people—often women—are “just good at juggling” persists because it explains visible behaviour without interrogating workload.

Women still absorb a disproportionate share of:

• coordination,

• admin,

• follow-ups,

• emotional labour,

• informal problem-solving.

In workplaces, this often looks like:

• being the default contact,

• smoothing tensions,

• answering “quick questions”,

• holding the mental map of what’s unfinished.

From the outside, it looks like multitasking ability. In reality, it’s unequal cognitive fragmentation.

Practice does not remove the cost. It only makes the strain less visible.

Availability is not neutral

One of the least examined risk factors in modern work is constant availability.

Being perpetually interruptible—by radio, phone, chat, or walk-ups—prevents the brain from rebuilding a stable mental model. Complex reasoning degrades. Small mistakes creep in. Fatigue arrives earlier.

In workshops and pits, this is well understood. That’s why:

• roles are clearly defined,

• escalation paths exist,

• communication is disciplined,

• focus is protected before critical calls.

In office and support environments, availability is often treated as a virtue rather than a risk signal.

Gendered exposure, not gendered ability

The problem is not that women can’t handle high-stakes work. It’s that they are more likely to enter it already cognitively taxed.

Patterns emerge early:

• women are more often asked to organise, note-take, coordinate, or “help out”,

• men are more often shielded for uninterrupted technical tasks,

• relational and emotional interruptions are routed disproportionately to women.

By the time a critical decision or sign-off arrives, the starting conditions are different—even when job descriptions match.

This is not a character issue. It’s a design issue.

Staying sharp is a system, not a personality trait

High-performance environments don’t rely on individual toughness. They engineer conditions that protect judgment.

That includes:

• sequencing complex decisions before admin and coordination,

• batching low-stakes communication,

• defining ownership so problems don’t “float” to the most responsive person,

• rotating interruption-heavy roles instead of quietly assigning them to the same individuals.

These practices don’t slow work. They reduce rework, error, and burnout.

In motorsport, this is standard operating procedure. Outside it, we often pretend sharpness is a personal attribute rather than a system outcome.

The cost of flattering language

Phrases like “she holds everything together”, “she’s the glue”, or “she can multitask like no one else” sound appreciative. In practice, they normalise risk.

They frame high cognitive load as a trait rather than a warning.
They reward coping instead of redesign.
They hide how much stabilising labour is being extracted from the same people, repeatedly.

In safety-critical work, we would never praise someone for absorbing chaos indefinitely. We would redesign the system.

What actually reduces risk

Staying sharp under pressure isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing fewer things at the moment they matter most.

The same principles apply whether you’re in a car, on the tools, or managing a complex operation:

• protect focus before critical tasks,

• reduce unnecessary switching,

• make coordination visible and shared,

• treat fatigue as information, not weakness.

Multitasking doesn’t make people resilient.
It makes systems fragile.

Final thought

The best drivers, pit crews, and mechanics aren’t good multitaskers. They work in environments that respect how brains function under pressure.

If we want safer decisions, better performance, and sustainable careers—especially for women—we need to stop celebrating multitasking and start treating cognitive load as the risk factor it is.

Staying sharp is not about heroics.
It’s about design.

Sources:

University of Melbourne
Women aren’t better multitaskers than men — they’re just doing more work
Explains the multitasking myth, gendered workload distribution, and lack of cognitive advantage.
https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/news/2988-women-aren't-better-multitaskers-than-men-%E2%80%93-they're-just-doing-more-work

Harvard Business Review (2018)
Research: Women and Men Are Equally Bad at Multitasking
Summarises cognitive psychology research on task-switching, performance costs, and decision fatigue.
https://hbr.org/2018/09/research-women-and-men-are-equally-bad-at-multitasking

Reason, J. (1990). Human Error. Cambridge University Press.
Foundational text in human factors and safety science. Establishes how interruptions and cognitive load contribute to latent failures and near-misses.

Drews, F. A. (2007). “The Frequency and Impact of Task Interruptions in the ICU.”
Shows how interruptions increase error likelihood in complex, safety-critical environments.

Weigl, M. et al. (2011). “Workflow interruptions and mental workload in hospitals.”
Links interruption frequency to increased mental workload and performance degradation.

Salmon, P. et al. (2017). Human Factors in the Design of Control Rooms.
Directly relevant to motorsport control, workshops, and race operations.

Monsell, S. (2003). “Task switching.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Classic paper on switch costs, reconfiguration time, and cognitive penalties.

Pashler, H. (1994). “Dual-task interference in simple tasks.”
Foundational evidence that humans cannot process multiple attention-demanding tasks simultaneously.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Widely accepted model explaining the shift from deliberative to heuristic decision-making under load.

Baumeister, R. et al. (1998). “Ego depletion.”
Introduces decision fatigue and depletion effects (note: debated in later literature, but still useful conceptually when framed cautiously, as you do).

Warm, J. S., Parasuraman, R., & Matthews, G. (2008). “Vigilance requires hard mental work.”
Demonstrates how sustained attention degrades under load and interruptions.

Endsley, M. R. (1995). “Toward a theory of situation awareness.”
Explains why fragmented attention undermines mental models in dynamic environments.

Parasuraman, R., & Riley, V. (1997). “Humans and automation.”
Relevant to motorsport data, diagnostics, and reliance on partial information under fatigue.

Babcock, L. et al. (2022). The No Club.
Empirical work on how women are disproportionately asked to do low-promotability, interruption-heavy work.

Williams, J. C., Phillips, K. W., & Hall, E. V. (2016). “Double jeopardy?”
Explores how women are channelled into support and coordination roles.

Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart.
Foundational text on emotional labour and its cognitive and psychological cost.

Ely, R., & Meyerson, D. (2000). “Theories of gender in organisations.”
Explains how gendered expectations become embedded in work design, not personality.

Perrow, C. (1984). Normal Accidents.
Classic systems theory showing how complexity and tight coupling amplify risk.

Sonnentag, S. (2017). “Psychological detachment from work.”
Evidence that uninterrupted recovery time is essential for cognitive performance.

Mazmanian, M. et al. (2013). “The autonomy paradox.”
Explains how constant connectivity increases workload and fragmentation despite appearing flexible.

Eurocontrol Human Factors Case Studies (aviation).
Practical examples of how focus protection reduces error in high-risk systems.