This article was updated on March 28, 2026.
You were hired to think. So why are you spending your day definitely not thinking? Instead, you’re reacting to:
- Every incoming message
- Other people’s priorities
- Non-stop “emergencies”
Your experience, your judgment, and your expertise are what make you valuable. But if you’re like most professionals, you spend your days in a reactive mode that makes it nearly impossible to unleash your genius. The culprit isn’t a packed calendar or an overflowing inbox.
Not only does a common type of multitasking reduce the quality of your performance, but it also can lower your IQ. Yes, you read that right.
However, you won’t find the remedy for multitasking in popular time management strategies. Instead, the fix comes from understanding the power of attention management.
The Truth About Multitasking
We have a word for the constant switching that defines modern work: multitasking. I’ve spent more than 15 years studying this, and my first clarification is always the same: there are three types of multitasking, and they affect us very differently.
Type 1: Two physical tasks at once.
Walking and chewing gum. For most people, no problem.
Type 2: One physical task + one cognitive task.
Pacing while on a phone call. Taking a walk to think through a problem. This is actually beneficial — physical movement increases blood flow and oxygen to the brain, supporting clearer thinking. As long as the activity isn’t too demanding, it complements cognitive work rather than competing with it.
Type 3: Two cognitive tasks at once.
This is the one that can slowly destroy your day. Research on attention and cognitive load has established that the brain processes conscious thought sequentially, not simultaneously. What feels like multitasking is actually rapid task-switching — and that switching carries a steep price.
The Hidden Cost of Cognitive Switching
You know this cost intimately. It shows up as:
- Where was I?
- What was I doing?
- What were we just talking about?
Every time you stop working on a document to respond to a colleague, you have to re-orient when you return to your work. Studies show that task switching:
- Makes everything take longer
- Degrades the quality of output
- Chips away at our capacity to learn and reason
According to researcher Gloria Mark at UC Irvine, workers switch their attention approximately every 47 seconds. We simply cannot be our most diplomatic, most creative, most patient, or most strategic in 47-second increments.
Studies show that when we task switch like this, everything we are doing takes longer and the quality is lower. If this is how you typically operate, what you are putting out into the world is very likely only a small fraction of your true capabilities. Task switching degrades our performance, and, not only that, it can literally lower our IQ.
And many of us engineer this problem ourselves.
Consider the two-monitor setup. Used thoughtfully — comparing documents, managing a complex spreadsheet — it’s a powerful tool. But most professionals use:
- Screen 1: Work
- Screen 2: Communication channels
Since new messages arrive constantly, this arrangement guarantees a cognitive switch every minute or two of every working day. Even a quick glance to check who sent an email constitutes a switch. Compounded across an entire workday, that lost momentum is an enormous drain on the quality of everything you produce.
This is not a time problem. No time management strategy fixes multitasking two cognitive tasks. Instead, this behavior requires an attention solution and single tasking, or focusing on one project at a time.
When Multitasking Actually Works
Here’s where I’ll surprise you: I’m actually a big fan of multitasking. Just not the kind most people default to.
The key — and this is the heart of everything I teach — is intention. The question isn’t whether to multitask. It’s whether you chose to multitask, or whether it just happened to you out of habit.
There are three situations where multitasking genuinely works in your favor:
1. Combine two physical tasks with low mental demands.
Catching up with a friend by phone while emptying the dishwasher or folding laundry is perfectly fine. Neither task requires deep concentration, and the consequences of distraction are minor. This is multitasking working for you.
2. Pair light physical activity with cognitive work.
Pacing while on a phone call. Taking a walk to think through a difficult problem. Physical movement increases blood flow and oxygen to the brain, which actively supports clearer thinking. As long as the physical activity isn’t too demanding, it complements your cognitive work, rather than competing with it.
3. Choose your multitasking deliberately. Don’t let it choose you.
This is the one most people miss. If you answer your phone while driving simply because it rang, you didn’t decide to multitask — you reacted, relinquished control of your attention. If you skim email while on a call simply because it’s open on your screen, that’s not efficiency. That’s your environment making decisions for you.
The difference between productive multitasking and destructive multitasking isn’t the activity. It’s whether you chose it.
I think multitasking has its time and place: the time and place you choose to engage in it.
Stop Multitasking by Default. Start Managing Your Attention.
If I could give you 28 or 30 hours in a day, rather than a mere 24, but you spent these hours switching tasks every few minutes, you would not accomplish more and your work would not improve. The problem isn’t a shortage of time. The problem is an overabundance of distraction.
Give up multitasking and learn to manage your attention. When you evaluate how you operate through the lens of attention rather than time, you begin noticing how often you allow your focus to be hijacked — and once you see this clearly, you can find a solution.
Ready to find out where your attention is really going? Take my Productivity Assessment and discover exactly what’s standing between you and your most meaningful work.
Key Takeaways
- Cognitive multitasking is neurologically impossible. It’s just rapid task-switching.
- Task-switching makes everything take longer and lowers the quality of your work.
- We switch our attention about every 47 seconds at work.
- There are three types of multitasking. Only one is truly harmful — two cognitive tasks at once.
- The difference between productive and destructive multitasking is intention.
- Default multitasking is costing you. Your best work requires your full attention.
