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The Surprising Habit That’s Sabotaging Your Productivity
(and What to Do Instead)
Multitasking has become a badge of honor.
We pride ourselves on our ability to juggle multiple tasks and responsibilities at once, bouncing from email to meeting to project without missing a beat.
But here’s the dirty little secret about multitasking: it’s not making you more productive.
In fact, it’s likely doing the exact opposite.
Numerous studies have shown that multitasking is a myth.
Our brains are not wired to focus on multiple things at once — instead, what we’re really doing is rapidly switching between tasks, a process that comes with a heavy cognitive cost.
Every time we shift our attention from one task to another, we incur a “switching cost” — a brief mental lag as our brain reorients itself to the new task.
These switching costs may only be a few seconds each, but they add up quickly over the course of a day, leading to decreased productivity, increased errors, and mental fatigue.