What Happens to Your Brain When You Stop Multitasking for a Month, According to Psychologists
Give single-tasking a try.
You’re listening to that Zoom call in the background, reviewing emails, and answering notifications as they ping on your phone. Or maybe you’re at home, after work, watching your favorite TV show while aimlessly thumbing through Instagram and having a conversation with your partner. It might feel like you’re getting a lot done, but this sort of chronic multitasking isn’t necessarily working in your favor.
“Multitasking appeals to many people because it creates the illusion of efficiency and control in a fast-paced, overstimulated world,” says Cashuna Huddleston, PhD, psychologist at New Way Psychological Services. “What we often miss is that the brain isn’t truly doing multiple things at once. It’s rapidly switching attention.”
Single-tasking—the opposite of multitasking—not only alleviates exhaustion from this rapid-fire attention shifting, but it can also improve the quality of the task. Your conversations with your partner are deeper. You don’t miss that important detail in the email. You hear what others are saying on the Zoom call. You fully enjoy your TV show.
What Does Psychology Say About Multitasking?
The allure of multitasking can rope you in real quick. After all, there’s a reason so many of us do it! While some multitasking might make sense—usually in low-stakes scenarios like, say, making breakfast—chronic multitasking can have negative effects. “It places significant strain on the prefrontal cortex, the area responsible for focus, decision-making, and emotional regulation,” Dr. Huddleston explains. “This constant task-switching increases cognitive load, elevates stress hormones like cortisol, and makes it harder for the brain to sustain attention or regulate emotions.”
And over the long term? This mental fragmentation can contribute to anxiety, irritability, and a persistent sense of being overwhelmed, even when we appear productive on the surface. It can also contribute to decision fatigue, lower empathy, more mistakes, and impulsivity versus intentionality. That means multitasking directly affects the quality of your work, your relationships, and overall life satisfaction.
Break the Pattern
Some argue that multitasking is similar to an addiction, which means that it takes some intentional work to curb the pattern. Bob Hutchins, PhD, a behavioral and organizational psychologist, explains why. “Our brain rewards novelty," he says. "Every time we open a new tab, check a notification, or respond to a quick text, we release dopamine. It’s a tiny hit. We mistake that chemical feedback loop for a sense of accomplishment.”
To add to the issue, we’re functioning in a culture where busyness and importance are tied together. If you’re working on five things at once, that may signal to others that you’re needed, successful, and highly efficient.
Benefits of Taking a 30-Day Pause From Multitasking
Single-tasking allows us to get in tune with how our brain is actually built to work. “We allow our brain to flow with a single narrative or problem statement," Dr. Hutchins says. "Physiologically, our heart rate lowers, cortisol production slows, and we have a sense of cognitive endurance.” And mentally, it allows us to shift from a shallow and reactive state to a deeper, creative one where intention drives decisions.
When you take a pause from multitasking for 30 days, you’ll go through a bit of an acclimation period. “If you have spent your whole life fragmenting your attention, your brain has become very good at being distracted," Dr. Hutchins says. "It expects that interruption. For the first few days, the brain will probably rebel. You will feel a physical itch to switch tabs or open your phone.” The good news is that your brain and body are highly adaptable, and it will adjust.
Attention Span Increases
By day 30, Dr. Hutchins says you will have rewired many of your neural pathways. “Your ‘attentional density’ increases, which is your ability to stick with a thought long enough to take action on it," he explains. "The static in your brain will quiet. You will be able to read a long paragraph without skimming or listen to someone talk without planning your response."
Owen Muir, MD, DFAACAP, psychiatrist and chief medical officer at Radial, adds that this is akin to lifting weights to build muscle. The more you do it, the stronger you become. “Brain circuits that fire together wire together, so we get more robust synchronicity of the neuronal circuits in our brain that let us attend more deeply the more we practice attending to one thing,” Dr. Muir says.
Productivity and Work Quality Improves
Productivity definitely looks different with multitasking versus single-tasking. And at first, you may even feel like you’re getting less done. “We have data that suggests that multitasking is in fact less efficient, despite it offering the promise of more efficiency,” Dr. Muir notes. “If you want to improve the quality of your work, do one thing at a time.”
Studies on “switching costs” have shown that we lose up to 40% of our productive time reorienting ourselves after an interruption. When you single-task, you begin to recover that lost time. But more importantly, you will begin to recover the quality of your work. “Multitasking has a churn effect, where you start many things but finish few,” Dr. Hutchins says. “When you single-task, you create value. You are bringing your full attention and cognitive capacity to a problem.”
Anxiety Levels Flatten
It can also improve your anxiety levels. Multitasking creates a feedback loop of anxiety: “When we are splitting our attention, our brain perceives the environment as chaotic and out of control, which signals our alarm system to stay on high alert," Dr. Hutchins says. "Single-tasking will create the opposite effect. It will send a safety signal to your nervous system."
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Essentially, the white noise static of background anxiety (“I’m going to forget something,” “I’m not doing enough,” “something bad is about to happen”) will subside because you are more present and fully engaged in the immediate activity. With all those benefits, it’s worth giving single-tasking a go to see how it might impact you in both the day-to-day and the long-term.
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