Slow Down Now: The almost serious antidote to workaholism

Compassion, understanding, and leniency for women who commit multi-tasking

Women have more connections between the two halves of the brain than do men. Some have speculated that this is why women are clever and men are not. From a slow lifestyle perspective, this makes one of our most vehement assertions—multi-tasking is a moral weakness—in need of some explanation.

Of course, “Do less, slowly,” has long been our guiding principal. The International Institute of Not Doing Much (IINDM), deliberated for many years before coming up with such incisive rhetoric.

When it became clear that multi-tasking was taking on epidemic proportions, the IINDM burst into action with the alacrity of a water buffalo emerging from a swamp. Letters were written—and posted—to all board members politely suggesting a meeting.

It was with an unprecedented sense of urgency that the IINDM set up a board meeting the very next year to discuss this pressing subject.

But all this is well known. Most believe the decision to vilify multi-tasking was an overreaction. In part, it was the fact that all the members at the time were men. In part, it was that the Institute was a bit hazy on its brain anatomy. They didn’t know that women had a thicker corpus callosum. In other words, women can engage in limited multi-tasking with fewer of the serious and debilitating side effects that occur in more vulnerable men. There are those that would argue that women are more adapted to a fast-paced world, or at least have the ability to cope with infants.

Some multi-tasking is unavoidable. But we should be ever watchful not to overdo it. Overdoing it is always a bad idea. Overdoing it is currently the focus of the Committee on Minimal Effort (CME). Overdoing it is too much. Too much is more than enough: Just enough multi-tasking to achieve the goal, and no more. However, multi-tasking should not be pleasurable. According to the Institute it is the enjoyment of multi-tasking which is morally reprehensible. This position was a decision of gargantuan proportions. Any change at the IINDM is met with fierce resistance and lethargy. But what the International Institute of Not Doing Much lacks in effectiveness, it makes up for in moral fiber.

Brain research does not answer the question why women’s brains find it difficult to comprehend the cataclysmic effect multi-tasking can have on a man. 

I was sitting on the couch yesterday eating an apple. My wife came up and asked me a question. Now why couldn’t she see that sitting on the couch and eating and apple was quite enough brain effort to expend without answering questions at the same time. “I am eating an apple,” I pointed out. I am not sure she understood—even with her superior brain power.

Multitasking is the enemy of calm.