As grant professionals/grant writers, we strategize how to use powerful words. That skill is our superpower. This blog series allows us the joy of examining our favorite words and lamenting our not-so-favorite words. Join us in the fun!

As you organize your day-to-day checklists, projects, and plans, do you ever curse the word “multitasking”? For grant writers, the word can represent a tormenting impossibility at times. In other, more energetic moments, we might believe that our brains can magically do and focus on multiple programs, multiple drafts, multiple budgets, and multiple logic models at one time.

Rationally speaking, the word simply cannot mean that our brains can review our bank balance and talk coherently to a family member while we read a novel and text real words to a friend, for instance. Not possible. But certainly, in a defined span of time, we can accomplish many tasks. So, say in five minutes, sure, you can multitask.

But what was the genesis of that (slightly wacky) concept in that exact sequence of letters, and when? As we did in an earlier blog about the word “priorities,” we have investigated for you. The fascinating results are as follows:

• Merriam-Webster reports that the first known use of “multitasking” was in 1966, in the context of a computer’s ability to perform jobs simultaneously.
  
  Ohhhhh, we can probably blame technology. Computers gave rise to the notion that many things could in fact be done at once. Maybe they are multitasking machines for real. (That’s what RAM is for, right?) Another conversation for other professions and philosophers.

• The Oxford English Dictionary, the gold standard for the history of English words, confirms “multitasking” as first appearing in 1966—clarifying that it was only an adjective. Interestingly, it says that “multitask” did not appear as a verb until the 1980s.

• Another refining insight comes from Google’s Ngram Viewer, showing that “multitasking” reached a noticeably large peak in 1988 for American English (likely in the timespan in which it appeared as a verb, we conclude).
  
  Hm. Do you think that the 1988 peak might align with growing computer use, the Olympics, and the presidential election? Everyone was in overdrive, focused on many types of ever-improving performance of both machines and humans. Just a thought.

So our origin answer seems to be in the first finding: Computers are the reason that we expect ourselves and other humans to multitask! Roughly in the 1960s and into the 1980s, we seemingly began trying to define ourselves in their terms.

The final question (and the solution) for this topic today is—do you have the tools and structures in place to help you prioritize within your time constraints and deadlines, so that you can proceed with focus as you multitask the way that humans do? That’s the key.

What does the word multitasking mean to you? How do you use it? OR avoid using it? We’d love to hear in the comments!

Works Cited

“Multitasking.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/multitasking. Accessed 30 Apr. 2025.

“Multitask.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/multitask_v?tab=factsheet#11449909. Accessed 30 Apr. 2025.

“Multitasking,multitask.” Ngram Viewer. American English corpus. Google. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=multitasking%2Cmultitask&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en-US&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false. Accessed 30 Apr. 2025.