Cognitive Load and the Myth of Multitasking
- Michelle D.
- Oct 19
- 7 min read
Walk into any office, scroll through social media, or glance at a to-do list, and you’ll see the same unspoken belief driving modern productivity: the idea that success means doing more — and doing it all at once.
We glorify busyness, wear multitasking like a badge of honor, and mistake movement for momentum. But neuroscience paints a different picture.
The human brain, for all its brilliance, wasn’t built for parallel processing. It’s a master of focus — not fragmentation. And the modern obsession with multitasking isn’t making us faster or smarter; it’s making us less effective, more anxious, and chronically distracted.
Welcome to the multitasking myth — the most persistent productivity illusion of our time.
The Brain’s True Operating System
At its core, the brain functions like a symphony — coordinated, rhythmic, and dependent on attention. Every task we perform, from writing an email to driving a car, requires a network of neurons firing in harmony.
When we attempt to do two things at once, those neural circuits compete for bandwidth. The brain doesn’t truly “multitask” — it switches rapidly between tasks, a process known as task switching¹.
Each switch carries a cognitive cost: a fraction of a second lost to refocusing, reorienting, and reactivating relevant neural pathways. It doesn’t sound like much, but across an hour, a day, or a career, those moments compound into massive inefficiency.
