In Utah, 310 students sat a test of juggling: hold a string of letters in mind while checking sums. They were also asked how much they multitasked in ordinary life, and how good they thought they were at it.
The more they multitasked, the worse they tended to score. And of the 277 who rated themselves, 193 put themselves above average. Their ratings had no reliable connection with their scores.
So here is a habit that feels like a skill, gets used most by the people who are worst at it, and comes with its own false confidence. That is the pattern of this whole article.
The obvious time-wasters are easy to spot. An evening of television has never been mistaken for a day's work. The habits that sabotage your productivity are the sneaky ones, which feel productive while keeping you stuck in place: the inbox held at zero, the email polished for an hour, the six small jobs cleared before the one that matters.
Each gets the same three questions here. Why does it feel like work? What happened when it was measured? What do you do instead?
Two things at once
Why it feels like work. Two tasks are moving, so twice as much must be getting done.
The word gives the game away. "Multitask" first appeared in print in 1965, in an IBM paper describing a computer. A computer does not do two things at once either. It works through a piece of each in turn: it saves one program, loads another and switches.
What was measured. People who juggle several streams of media all day were compared with people who rarely do. The heavy jugglers were more easily pulled off course by things that did not matter. They were also worse at the one thing they practise most: switching from task to task.
The screen does not even have to be yours. Students who could merely see a classmate's busy laptop scored 17% lower on a test of the lecture, and felt barely distracted. Songs with words take their share as well. Learning: The Key to Personal and Professional Growth has both findings.
What feels like efficiency is mental thrashing.
Instead. One thing on the screen. The call or the document, never both.
The three-minute day
Why it feels like work. Email, then the presentation, then a call, then the spreadsheet, then a message. Every one of them is work.
What was measured. Observers followed analysts, software developers and managers through their working days. On average each stayed about three minutes on a task before moving to another. In a second set of observations, with 24 office workers, 57% of what they worked on was interrupted. When they did get back to it, more than two other things had come in between.
Your brain handles this the way a 2010 laptop handles Photoshop. That is why you can work all day and feel you got nothing done. You were busy, and your attention was in pieces. Cal Newport's makes the case for the long unbroken stretch.
Lord Chesterfield had the measure of it in 1747, in a letter to his son: "There is time enough for everything, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time."
Instead. First get your own number. For one day, make a mark on paper every time you change task. The total makes the argument for you. Then put like with like: the calls back to back, the writing in one stretch with nothing else open.
The interruption that speeds you up
Why it feels like work. Because it is. Here is the uncomfortable part: interruptions do not slow you down.
What was measured. People working through a set task were interrupted as they went. They finished sooner than those left in peace, and their work was no worse. They made up the time by working faster, and they paid for it in stress, frustration, a sense of pressure and effort.
So the habit rewards you. The output looks fine, and the cost goes on a bill that never appears on a timesheet.
Instead. Start with the interruptions you cause yourself: the inbox opened "just to check". Then shut the doors you can shut, one hour at a time, counted down on a so that the clock is not on your phone.
For the rest of the day, batch the notifications. Do not ban them. When 237 people had theirs delivered three times a day, they felt more attentive, in a better mood and more in control of their phones than people who got them as usual. Those who got none at all gained little, and grew more anxious about what they were missing.
What you carry with you
Why it feels like work. You have moved on to the next thing. Part of you has not.
What was measured. Across four tests, people were pulled off a task they knew they would have to come back to in a hurry. Their attention stayed partly with the old task, and they did worse on the new one. Others did one thing first: they took a moment to note where they had got to and what they would do on their return. For them the cost disappeared.
Instead. Before you answer the knock, write one line: where you are, and what comes next. It is the cheapest fix on this page.
The inbox
Why it feels like work. Every reply is a small job finished, and the counter goes down.
What was measured. Thirteen office workers had their email cut off for five working days. They switched between windows less and stayed longer on each task, and heart monitors showed lower stress. In a larger test, 124 adults who checked their email three times a day for a week felt less stressed than in a week of checking whenever they liked.
A third test is less tidy. Forty office workers were tracked for 12 working days with activity logs and body sensors. The more of the day went on email, the lower they rated their own productivity and the higher their measured stress. Among the heaviest users, dealing with it in batches went with feeling more productive. It did not go with lower stress, "despite widespread claims".
Even "Inbox Zero", the creed of the empty inbox, is not what it seems. Merlin Mann coined the phrase in 2006. In 2020 he said that he does not keep his own inbox empty, and that the term has been misunderstood.
Instead. All the email in one sitting, at set times, and closed between them. Then look at the total. The hours count as well as the timing.
The phone on the desk
Why it feels like work. It is face down. You are leaving it alone.
What was measured. In one pair of tests, people did worse on demanding tasks with their own phone in sight, untouched, than with it in another room. A careful repeat of the second test found no difference at all. When 22 tests of phones nearby or in use were pooled, there was an overall cost, and it varied a great deal from one to the next.
Something, then, and probably small. A phone that buzzes is another matter: a notification alone, left unanswered, disrupted a demanding task about as much as taking a call.
The phone is a poor place to rest as well. When 414 people solving anagrams took a short break half-way through, those who spent it on a phone came back slower and solved fewer than those who spent it on a computer or on paper.
Instead. Another room costs nothing. Do it for the hard hour, take your breaks without it, and stop worrying about the rest.
The open office
This one the building does to you. The walls came down so that people would talk. When two company headquarters made the move, sensors worn by the staff showed face-to-face conversation falling by about 70%, while email and messages rose. People with no door make one out of a screen. They also become their own interrupters: across 889 hours of watching 36 people at work, those in open offices broke off from their own tasks more often.
Instead. If you can choose where you sit for the hard hour, choose the door. If you cannot, are the door you carry with you.
Those seven were about where your attention goes. The next five are about what you choose to do with it.
The easy task first
Why it feels like work. Six things ticked off before lunch. The list is shorter. The one that mattered is still on it.
What was measured. Six years of records from a hospital emergency department. When the load went up, the staff picked the easier cases first. On the day it looked like more work done. Once the difficulty of the cases was allowed for, it was less, and those who did it most improved more slowly. In the laboratory the pull had two sources: tiredness, and "the sense of progress" that finishing something gives.
Busy work becomes hiding work. A deadline pulls the same way as an easy win, and Finding Balance: 8 Ways to a Healthier Work-Life Dynamic has what happened when people were offered an urgent task and a better-paid one.
Thoreau put the question in a letter in 1857: "It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?"
Instead. Two questions, once a week. What important work did I avoid this week? What busy work did I use to avoid it? Then go through last week's list and mark each item high, medium or low for what it moved. The work you are avoiding is usually the work that matters most. Some tasks should be deleted, not completed.
The optimistic schedule
Why it feels like work. A full plan for the day looks like control.
What was measured. Across five tests, people underestimated how long their own tasks would take. They made no such mistake about other people's: watching someone else, they guessed long. When they planned, they pictured the job going smoothly and left their own past out of it. The bias vanished in the one group told to base the estimate on how long similar jobs had taken them before.
Why Your Brain Sabotages You Every Time You Try to Start, linked below, has the students whose 34-day thesis took 55.
Instead. Before you promise a date, ask one question: how long did the last one take? Give that number to the calendar.
Polish
Why it feels like work. Three hours on an email that needed five minutes. Each pass feels like care.
Real perfectionism is anxiety wearing a business suit. Each revision buys a little relief from the fear of being judged.
What was measured. When 95 investigations of perfectionism at work were pooled, perfectionists turned out to be more motivated, more engaged and longer at their desks, with no clear gain in how well they did the job. Why Your 'High Standards' Are Holding Back Your Career, linked below, has the rest.
Instead. One question: "Am I making this meaningfully better, or am I just avoiding the discomfort of finishing?" If you cannot name the improvement, you are procrastinating with polish. Set a finishing time that feels slightly too early, and keep it.
"I work best under pressure"
Why it feels like work. The night before a deadline is the most productive night of the month, so the delay must have been strategy. Anxiety becomes your productivity barometer: when you are calm, you feel you are going too slowly.
What was measured. Students who put their work off felt better than their classmates early in the term. By the end they were more stressed, more often ill, and had lower marks on every assignment. And the interrupted people above show what pressure buys: the same output, with more strain.
Instead. Think of the best work you have done, and note the state you were in when you did it. Productive energy feels focused and sustainable. Anxiety feels urgent and scattered.
The excuse in advance
Why it feels like work. You are busy right up to the big day: a crisis elsewhere, a late night, a sudden need to rethink the plan.
What was measured. Students were given problems and all were told they had done well. For some, the problems had been unsolvable, so the success could only have been luck. Before a second round, each chose between two pills: one said to sharpen performance, one said to blunt it. The men who had "succeeded" by luck were the only group to prefer the pill that would blunt them. The women did not show it.
A failure with a handicap attached is easier to live with than a failure without one. The habit has a name: self-handicapping. What it protects you from is finding out that last time was a fluke.
Chess has its emblem of the handicap. Alexandre Deschapelles, probably the strongest player in the world in his day, made a trademark of always giving his opponents a head start. Whatever his reasons, the arithmetic is neat. Lose, and the head start explains it. Win, and you won from behind.
Instead. Ask the awkward questions. Do you create emergencies when a project is almost done? Do you find flaws in a plan that is working? If the pattern is there, name the handicap before you reach for it.
The last four are about fuel.
Blaming the battery
Why it feels like work. It feels like an explanation. "I have made too many decisions today."
What was measured. The famous evidence is a set of parole judges whose favourable rulings fell from about 65% to almost none through each session and bounced back after a food break. The numbers are real. Then a simulation showed that the same curve appears with no tiredness at all: favourable rulings take longer, and a judge who plans ahead even slightly will not start a long case just before the break.
The wider idea, a tank of willpower drained by every choice, was put to 23 laboratories and 2,141 people. The effect all but disappeared.
Something smaller does hold. After a whole day of hard mental work, people's choices drifted towards whatever was quick and easy, and a signalling chemical had built up in the part of the brain that keeps you on course.
Instead. Take the decision that matters before the long day of hard thinking, not after it. Wearing the same shirt every morning will not save you.
The wrong hour
Why it feels like work. An hour is an hour on the calendar.
What was measured. Over four school years, every child in Danish state schools sat computer tests at whatever hour the timetable and the computer room allowed. For every hour later in the day, scores slipped a little. A break of 20 to 30 minutes before the test more than made up for an hour.
The twist came when people solved problems at their best and worst times of day. The logical problems came out about the same. The ones that need a flash of insight were solved better at the worst time. The explanation offered is that a less guarded mind lets the odd idea through.
A walk does the same job on purpose. Across four tests, walking raised creative output while people walked and for a while after they sat down again. On one test, 81% of them did better on their feet.
Instead. Rate your energy from 1 to 10 every hour for a week. Put the careful work where the numbers are high, and take the stuck creative problem to where they are low, or out for a walk. And take the break.
The hour taken from sleep
Why it feels like work. It is work, done while the house is asleep. It looks like dedication.
What was measured. Adults kept to six hours or less in bed for two weeks ended up thinking as poorly as people kept awake for up to two nights. Their own ratings of how sleepy they felt rose at first and then barely moved. 5 Ways to Harness Your Energy and Beat the Afternoon Slump has the rest.
It is the Utah result again. The loss does not announce itself to the person losing it.
Instead. Treat the late hour as a loan against tomorrow, and look at the price before you take it.
The cup that makes you sharp
Why it feels like work. It feels like fuel. One cup and the fog lifts.
What was measured. In daily drinkers, the morning cup mostly undoes the tiredness and low mood that a night without caffeine has built. The fog it lifts is largely its own. And the bill arrives at night: a strong hit of caffeine taken six hours before bed still cut people's sleep by more than an hour, and they were unaware of it. Unstoppable Energy: 14 Ways to Stay Focused and Strong Every Day has the rest.
Instead. Make water the default. Drop the afternoon cup first, and watch what a week does to your evenings and your mornings.
Two untested fixes
Two you will meet everywhere are counting down from five before you act, and working in blocks of exactly ninety minutes. No test of either turned up. They may help you. They have not been checked.
One change
Awareness alone changes nothing. And a dozen fixes at once is one more way of staying busy.
Pick the habit above that costs you most. The two weekly questions will tell you which.
Change one thing about it. Write the one line before you switch. Close the inbox between sittings. Start with the task you have been walking around.
The students in Utah had all the time they needed. What they lacked was an accurate reading of themselves. Most of this page comes down to the same thing: mind management more than time management.
Tonight, choose tomorrow's first task. One task, the one that matters, written down.
Is the polish the problem? Why Your 'High Standards' Are Holding Back Your Career — which kind of high standard helps your career, and which kind holds it back.
Is it the starting you cannot do? Why Your Brain Sabotages You Every Time You Try to Start — why you put things off, and eight ways to begin.
Know someone who is proud of how well they multitask? Send them this. The opening is about them.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional. If your mood has been low for weeks or you're having thoughts of harming yourself, reach out for help today.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
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