This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

My Quixotic Quest: Replace "Multi-tasking" with "Mothering"

When computer-lingo "multi-tasking" made it into the common vocabulary to refer to the activity of doing a plurality of tasks simultaneously, mothers around the industrialized world raised an eyebrow and tossed out an ironic "Is that what they're calling it now?"--while packing up the kids' lunch and soothing the baby on a bouncing hip . . . and phoning work to let them know they were running late.

Normally one gives credit to the originators of a practice, even if a johnny-come-lately has better marketing and becomes more well-known for it. So here is my quixotic quest: Let's give mothers their due credit for inventing the practice, if not the term, of multi-tasking. I think the most appropriate form of credit would be to replace "multi-tasking" with the term "mothering."

Think about it. "Multi-tasking" is so patriarchal. It's all about men and their silly little task-oriented focus. It's also not very warm. If you say it with a sensuous French accent, it even sounds sinister. In redneck, it just sounds silly. But "mothering"? Now that brings out a whole new set of connotations--in any accent. And I figure, if it's mothers who invented "multi-tasking" the least we can do is give them a less manly word.

So the next time a boss has an employee that is still stuck on one-thing-at-a-time project management, he should tell the employee to "Get with it. You've got to learn to mother." Or an already-skilled individual (formerly known as an expert "multi-tasker") who has reached his or her capacity to do more than one thing at once can fend off further tasks by simply admitting, "Look, I'm mothering to my capacity right now. I can't mother one more task." Entire business conventions could be oriented around the theme. I can imagine the seminar titles at the next business conference: "Doing More: The Art of Mothering" and "The Workplace in the Twenty-first Century: Just Like Mom Used to Do." It would sure bring a whole new meaning to the term "productivity."