Sunday, August 12, 2012

WOMEN SPECIAL/WOMEN ATWORK ...MULTI TASKING SHOULDN’T BECOME A VICE



WOMEN ATWORK                                 
MULTI TASKING SHOULDN’T BECOME A VICE
    Women are famous for their multitasking skills and, increasingly, corporates are realizing that it’s an incredible virtue to bank on. It is quite common for a working woman to fit in doctors’ appointments, coordinate play dates, and plan birthday parties during working hours without compromising at all on her work. At home, too, she continues to multitask—perhaps focusing on dinner, homework, and upcoming assessments, with one eye on pending emails and office calls. Taking this into the weekend, Saturday mornings are often kept for household matters or groceries, while Sundays are for catching up on reading material, science projects and some sleep, if possible.
    A group of researchers from the University of Hertfordshire set up a study to prove this common perception about women. The study, led by British psychologist Keith Laws, not only proves that women are better than men at juggling more than one task, but also that women approach multiple problems more methodically and logically.
    A more recent study published in American Sociological Review upholds this notion, but goes on to add that while woman are the ultimate multitaskers, the emotional experience that comes with multitasking is very different for mothers than it is for fathers. This is where I think a virtue may turn into a vice; the research concludes that for mothers, multitasking on the whole is a negative experience whereas for fathers it is not so.
    In a familiar terrain, Sreeja, a senior management marketing professional with a fast growing IT firm, explains how she is awake before the kids, gets them ready and fed, drops them to school, and heads to work, all by 8.30 am. By the time Sreeja is at her desk in her most productive phase with emails cleared, meetings planned, and getting ready to hit to the road, her fellow colleagues are still settling into their desks with morning lattes. I bumped into her at our kids’ sports day and, while cheering her son as he ran the flat race, she confided that while enjoying every bit of her new assignment, she finds her work perpetually hovering around her like a buzzing bee wherever she is—at the dinner table, at parent teacher meetings, on weekend shopping trips, even on holidays!
    Sreeja is fortunate that her firm has rewarded her hard work with an option for her to work from home, and uses this flexibility to keep herself sane. But it is this very ‘flexible working option’ that magnifies her angst; she is constantly in ‘juggling’ mode with different agendas eating away her sanity and robbing her of emotional reserves. It almost feels like playing badminton with two shuttle cocks and making sure that you do not let any one of the shuttle cocks hit the ground throughout the game—which is day after day, week after week, month after month, all year round.
    Thus, while multitasking skills are seen as a great virtue, women have to learn to utilize this virtue with measured restraint so that it does not become a vice. Drawing boundaries between work and play—which comes so easily to men—is an art that women need to learn as a healthy antidote to that awful stress created from juggling career with motherhood.
Ameeta Chatterjee TOI120713

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