The multitasking myth we’re all falling for
You know the feeling: 17 tabs open, a message in between, quickly answering that email, all the while “listening” to a video. It seems efficient. As if your brain is a kind of supercomputer.
But in many cases, you’re not multitasking. You’re switching at lightning speed. And that sounds harmless, until you realize what happens every time you switch: your brain has to “reset” what it’s supposed to do.
What really happens: you switch, you restart, you lose
Psychologists have been studying this for decades with task-switching experiments. People are asked to alternate between calculating and classifying something, for example. Every time the task changes, you see the same pattern:
- it takes longer to get back on track
- you make more mistakes
- and the more complex the task, the greater the delay
That’s the “switch cost”: the time and mental energy you lose purely by switching, not by the work itself.
The price is higher than you think
In well-known experiments where people switched back and forth between different tasks, the extra time per switch increased and became more pronounced with more difficult rules or unfamiliar tasks. The key insight is simple but painful:
It’s not the tasks themselves, but the constant switching that slows you down.
And you often don’t notice this as a “delay,” but as something more vague:
- You lose your way in the middle of an email
- You have to reread what you just did
- You make silly mistakes in something you normally do easily
- You feel pressured, but afterward, you get less done
That’s why multitasking is so treacherous: it feels active, but it leaks performance.
“But I’m good at it” (spoiler: that’s what most people think)
An added twist: research on “heavy media multitaskers” (people who often use multiple media simultaneously) found no superpowers. On the contrary: they were found, on average, to be more susceptible to distraction and more likely to have difficulty ignoring irrelevant stimuli.
In other words: frequent multitasking isn’t necessarily training. It could also mean your brain is getting used to constant interruptions.
When does “multitasking” actually work?
There’s nuance. You can sometimes do two things simultaneously if one is almost automatic (think: walking and talking). Switching quickly can also be useful in situations that require it.
But as soon as both tasks demand real attention (writing, math, planning, studying, analyzing), “multitasking” usually becomes: switching tasks at a loss.
You don’t have to work harder. You just have to restart less often.
