Stop Multitasking — It’s Making You Less Productive and More Stressed
By Joree Rose, LMFT
Multitasking feels productive. It feels like you’re getting more done, covering more ground, making better use of limited time. It’s practically a badge of honor in modern life — the ability to juggle multiple demands simultaneously.
The research tells a very different story.
Neuroscience has consistently shown that the human brain doesn’t actually multitask — it rapidly switches between tasks, paying a cognitive cost each time it does. This switching depletes mental resources, increases error rates, reduces the quality of thinking, and — here’s the part that surprises most people — actually takes more time than doing one thing at a time would have.
A study from Stanford University found that heavy multitaskers performed worse than light multitaskers on every cognitive measure tested — including the ability to filter out irrelevant information, to manage their working memory, and to switch tasks efficiently. The very thing they were practicing was making them worse at it.
And beyond productivity, there’s a cost to wellbeing. Chronic task-switching keeps the nervous system in a low-grade state of activation that contributes to anxiety, mental fatigue, and the pervasive feeling that you’re always behind even when you’re always busy.
Why We Do It Anyway
Multitasking persists partly because it feels good in a particular way — it mimics busyness, which we’ve been conditioned to associate with productivity and worth. There’s also an element of anxiety management: keeping multiple things moving simultaneously can feel like a way of staying on top of everything, of not letting anything fall through the cracks.
The irony is that this behavior tends to ensure that more things fall through the cracks, not fewer.
What Single-Tasking Actually Looks Like
Single-tasking doesn’t mean doing less. It means doing one thing at a time, with full attention, and then moving to the next thing.
In practice this looks like: closing unnecessary browser tabs when you’re writing. Putting your phone face down or out of reach when you’re in a conversation. Setting a timer for focused work and not switching tasks until it goes off. Eating a meal without scrolling. Being in a conversation without composing your response while the other person is still talking.
These feel radical in a culture of constant connectivity. They are also among the most effective things you can do for both productivity and stress.
The Mindfulness Connection
This is, at its core, a mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is the capacity to bring your full attention to what is happening right now — to this task, this conversation, this moment — rather than fragmenting your attention across multiple inputs simultaneously.
Every time you practice single-tasking, you’re training the same neural circuits that meditation builds. And those circuits get stronger with use. Over time, sustained focus becomes easier. The pull toward distraction becomes less automatic. The quality of your attention — to your work, to the people you love, to your own inner life — improves.
A Place to Start
Choose one thing you regularly do while doing something else — eating lunch while scrolling, listening to a podcast while working, half-attending to a conversation while checking your phone — and for one week, do that thing alone. Just that thing.
Notice what it’s like. Notice the initial discomfort, the urge to add something else, the strange quality of full presence. Notice also what becomes possible when your attention is actually whole.
For more on building presence and reducing anxiety, learn about individual therapy or explore the Journey Forward podcast.
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