The Realities of Multitasking Are Not What You Think
If you are reading this while also keeping an eye on your email, half-listening to something in the background, and mentally composing a response to a message you received an hour ago, you might be doing something that feels extremely familiar. You might call it multitasking, and you may very well take a certain pride in it.
How many things can you actually do at once?
Unfortunately there is a good deal of research that says clearly and consistently that you are not actually multitasking. In fact, the body of research backing this up has actually found that you cannot multitask. And our attempts to multitask cost us more than you might realize.
The Myth That Took Hold
Multitasking has been sold to us as a marker of efficiency, productivity, and a professional virtue. Job listings have literally listed it as a desired qualification for years. Some of us have built entire identities around the belief that doing more things at once makes us more productive. Research in neuroscience, however, doesn’t agree.
What we think is multitasking is in fact actually rapid task-switching: the brain quickly disengaging from one task, reconfiguring its cognitive resources, and re-engaging with another. This happens fast enough that it can feel seamless. But you’r never actually doing more than one thing at a time. Your prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for planning, concentration, and complex decision-making, cannot fully focus on more than one cognitively demanding task at a time (Rubinstein, Meyer, & Evans, 2001).
Research has shown that two specific stages occur every time your brain switches between tasks. The first is goal shifting: the conscious or unconscious decision to move attention from one task to another. The second is rule activation: the brain turning off the operating rules for the first task and turning on the rules for the second. Both stages take time, and both consume mental energy. Multiply that process by the dozens or hundreds of task-switches that occur in a typical modern workday, and you begin to understand why you feel exhausted by 3 PM even when you have not done anything that would be particularly strenuous.
The Cost of Multitasking
The costs of rapid task-switching over time are not trivial, and they are not simply a matter of feeling a little unfocused. The research reveals a significant and measurable toll on cognitive performance, mental health, and physical wellbeing.
Intensive task-switching over time is a contributor to chronic exhaustion and burnout.
On productivity: research by Rubinstein and colleagues found that task-switching can cost up to 40% of a person's productive time. That is nearly half of your available mental output disappearing into the gap between tasks (Rubinstein, Meyer, & Evans, 2001). And the people who believe they are most skilled at multitasking tend to pay the highest price. A 2009 study at Stanford University tested 262 participants and found that heavy media multitaskers were significantly worse at filtering irrelevant information, maintaining working memory, and, in a surprising twist, at task-switching itself. The researchers concluded that often, the people who multitask most are the worst at it (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009).
On stress and cortisol: when the brain is engaged in frequent task-switching, it triggers the release of stress hormones, including cortisol and adrenaline. These are part of our body's threat-response system, designed for genuine emergencies, not for managing an inbox. Research published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience found that elevated cortisol is specifically associated with impaired performance on tasks that require switching between different demands, meaning that the more stressed you become from task-switching, the worse your task-switching becomes. It is a compounding loop (Plessow et al., 2012).
On burnout: the connection between chronic task-switching, sustained cortisol elevation, and burnout is well established in research literature. Stress without adequate recovery is the fastest path to cognitive fatigue. Over time, the persistent cognitive load of constant task-switching depletes the mental and emotional resources that protect against burnout, leaving people feeling chronically exhausted, increasingly ineffective, and profoundly depleted in ways that rest alone cannot fully repair.
I see the effects of this regularly in my practice. I often find that clients are doing everything and yet accomplishing less than they should. They are tired in a way that sleep does not seem to fix. And, they describe feeling simultaneously overwhelmed and unproductive. Chronic task-switching is not always the root cause, but it is almost always a part of the story.
The One Real Exception
Now, here is the part I genuinely love, because it is both scientifically accurate and, I think, quietly wonderful.
There is a form of real multitasking that your nervous system performs continuously and without any effort from you at all. Right now, as you read this, you are also breathing. Your heart is beating. Your body is maintaining temperature, digesting, and managing any number of autonomic processes simultaneously. Your nervous system is, in the truest sense, doing many things at once.
This, of course, is not the multitasking we are usually talking about. These are automatic, non-conscious processes, managed by the autonomic nervous system, not the prefrontal cortex. They require no deliberate attention and impose no cognitive load. And far from being a limitation, this capacity is actually one of the most useful things about being human.
It is what lets you walk through a park at the end of a hard day and process your thoughts while your body simply moves. It is what lets you enjoy dinner with people you love, laughing and catching up, while your nervous system handles everything underneath. The richest, most restorative experiences in life very often involve exactly this kind of effortless background processing, the body doing what it does while the conscious mind is free to simply be present.
“Multitask” less in order to start living more.
Knowing this matters because it changes what we are actually reaching for when we feel the pull toward multitasking. It’s not about trying to be more capable, forward moving, and efficient. It’s about being more present—shifting from the productivity of things to the productivity of feeling and meaningful experience. We have an opportunity to recapture a sense of ease and flow that we have here to fore engineered out of our days by filling every moment with conscious demands.
What to Do Instead
The alternative to multitasking is not doing less. It is doing things differently, one at a time, in a way that actually honors the way your brain works.
Streamline. Look honestly at your day and identify where you are creating unnecessary cognitive switching. Batching similar tasks together, checking email during designated windows rather than continuously, and protecting blocks of focused time all reduce the hidden tax of task-switching without reducing your output. In fact, the research consistently shows the opposite: people who prioritize and focus accomplish more, not less, and feel meaningfully better about the work they do (Rubinstein, Meyer, & Evans, 2001).
Prioritize. Not everything that feels urgent is urgent. One of the most significant drivers of chronic task-switching is the belief that every incoming demand requires an immediate response. It usually does not. Being deliberate about what gets your focused attention, and when, is not a productivity hack. It is a form of self-respect and care.
Build in transition time. Rather than moving immediately from one task to the next, give yourself a brief pause. A minute or two of conscious breathing, a short walk, or simply a moment of stillness between tasks allows your brain to better complete its disengagement from the previous task before fully engaging with the next one. Some manner of small practice can meaningfully reduce the accumulated cognitive load of a busy day.
Notice the pull. The next time you feel drawn to open another tab, pick up your phone mid-task, or squeeze one more thing into an already full moment, let that feeling be your signal to slow things down. Let the urge to “multitask” be a prompt to do the opposite: narrow your focus, return to a prioritized and curated task, and trust that one thing done well will always outperform three things done in a fractured way.
A Final Thought
We have collectively convinced ourselves that busy-ness is the same as productivity, and that doing more at once is the same as doing more overall. The science is clear that neither of these things is true.
Your brain is not built for a “multitasking” marathon. It is built for focus, for depth, for the kind of engaged, present attention that makes work feel meaningful and life feel full. Reclaiming that is not about doing less. It is about doing with greater presence.
Streamline your thinking to strengthen your mind. And if you would like support building the kinds of habits and practices that make that possible, that is exactly the kind of work I love to do with people. Reach out at and schedule a free 20-minute introductory call to explore how we can get you where you want to be.
Adam Scheldt is a holistic counselor, life coach, and founder of Adam Scheldt Wellness LLC, serving clients in Western New York and online. To schedule a free 20-minute introductory call, use the “Book a Free Call” link at the top of the page.
References
Neurolaunch. (2024, August 18). Multitasking costs: Hidden impacts on stress levels and productivity. https://neurolaunch.com/multitasking-stress/
Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(37), 15583–15587. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0903620106
Plessow, F., Kiesel, A., & Kirschbaum, C. (2012). The stressed prefrontal cortex and goal-directed behaviour: Acute psychosocial stress impairs the flexible implementation of task goals. Experimental Brain Research, 216(3), 397–408. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2943-1
Plessow, F., Fischer, R., Kirschbaum, C., & Goschke, T. (2011). Inflexibly focused under stress: Acute psychosocial stress increases shielding of action goals at the expense of reduced cognitive flexibility with increasing time lag to the stressor. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(11), 3218–3227. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00024
Rubinstein, J. S., Meyer, D. E., & Evans, J. E. (2001). Executive control of cognitive processes in task switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27(4), 763–797. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.27.4.763
VitaLibrary. (2026, February 1). How stress affects the brain: Cortisol, focus, and burnout. https://vitalibrary.com/stress-brain-cortisol-focus-burnout/