Even if we don’t consider ourselves a multitasker, if we have emails coming to our phones, have multiple pages open in our browsers, several apps open on our phones, and check our devices whilst relaxing, we are multitasking.

“Multitasking is a myth. In reality, it’s rapidly switching from one task to another, and then back again. And every time you make that switch, you pay a ‘tax’ on both your time and your energy. For that reason, it’s almost always more efficient to monotask: Focus on one thing and move on when you’re done, so you don’t pay unnecessary switching taxes.” Dr Sahar Yousef, Cognitive Neuroscientist, UC Berkeley.

According to ASANA, a project management software company, multitasking isn’t just bad for our productivity – it’s also bad for our mental health. According to their research, seven in ten knowledge workers (71%) experienced burnout at least once in the previous 12 months.

Burnout and multitasking certainly seem to go together. In the same survey, ASANA found that two-thirds (65%) of people who feel uncomfortable not having access to their phones report experiencing burnout, compared to 45% of people who aren’t uncomfortable being separated from their devices.

There is a myth that we can naturally multitask, but the human brain is not capable of giving full attention to more than one task at a time. Every single time we switch between tasks, there is a cost. When we think we’re multitasking, we’re actually switching between two tasks really quickly. It's draining. It's taking longer to do the same thing.

Multitasking does not improve productivity. This is not easy to compute: surely we’re doing two things at once – even if those things aren’t perfectly optimised – aren’t we getting more done?

As ASANA says, it’s actually the opposite. Research done by Dr David Meyer and Dr Joshua Rubinstein showed that even these brief mental blocks that happen as a result of context switching cost as much as 40% of someone’s productive time. Because it takes mental effort to switch between cognitive tasks, multitasking affects your ability to get work done efficiently and effectively.

It’s probably fair to say that we can’t altogether avoid multitasking, but we can acknowledge that we need times in our day when we can monotask – times of deep work and deep rest. In between, we will have to multitask. If we have time-boxed sections of our day where we are intentional about one activity, we will find our productivity and mental health benefit considerably.