The Multitasking Myth: Can You Really Do Everything at Once?

Is multitasking really productive? Read how it affects attention, errors and stress, and how organisations can manage task load in a healthier way.

There is a phrase often found in job adverts: "Able to multitask and work at a fast pace." The employee who answers emails in meetings, corrects a report while on the phone and runs three projects at once is held up as an example in many organisations. But is it really possible to do several jobs well at the same time? The answer from psychology research is that multitasking is not as shiny as it is thought to be. In this article, for business owners, managers, HR and occupational health and safety (OHS) specialists, I explain the background of the multitasking myth, its effects on productivity, errors and stress, and ways of managing task load more healthily.

What Is Multitasking? Can the Brain Really Do Two Things at Once?

In everyday language, multitasking means carrying out more than one job at the same time. From the point of view of cognitive psychology, however, two different situations need to be distinguished.

Automated tasks: Tasks where one requires almost no attention, such as talking while walking or washing dishes while listening to music, can be carried out together. This is because one of them has become automatic through long practice.

Tasks that require attention: The situation is different with tasks that both require conscious attention, such as handling a customer call while writing a report, answering emails while listening to a meeting, or following an instruction from a radio while adjusting a machine. The brain does not in fact do these tasks at the same time, but moves quickly back and forth between them. This is called task switching.

At every switch the mind has to let go of the rules of the previous task and load those of the new one. Because these switches are so brief, they go unnoticed, but they add up to a serious loss of time and attention. Cognitive psychology research has long shown that switching between tasks generally makes work take longer and increases the likelihood of errors.

Why do we feel productive?

Dealing with many things at once gives a person the feeling of being active and busy. The completion of each small task (answering an email, reading a message) gives a brief sense of achievement. For this reason, a person may think they have done a lot even if the truly important tasks have not progressed by the end of the day. In organisations, this busyness is often confused with productivity. Yet the measure of productivity is not how many tasks were touched during the day, but how many important tasks were completed correctly and on time. Managers who can make this distinction can assess their teams' real capacity more accurately and notice the early signs of fatigue more easily.

The Cost of Multitasking: Productivity, Errors and Stress

The costs of constant task switching for organisations and employees can be grouped under a few headings.

Lost time

Every switch from one task to another requires the mind to "warm up" again. When you return to a task that was left half-done, remembering where you left off and rebuilding the context takes time. Repeated dozens of times a day, this loss can amount to hours.

Errors and quality problems

When attention is divided, details are missed. An email sent to the wrong person, an order entered incompletely, a document approved without checking: these are often the result of divided attention. In a production environment, this can turn into a safety risk. If an operator is trying both to monitor the machine and to answer a request coming in by phone, the likelihood of missing a critical warning increases.

Loss of deep thinking

Developing strategy, analysis, creative problem solving and learning require long, uninterrupted attention. A working day that is constantly interrupted leaves no space for this kind of work. While teams are busy with urgent but unimportant tasks, important but non-urgent tasks are postponed again and again. I discussed the wider effects of divided attention in the article on the focus crisis.

Stress and mental fatigue

Trying to hold many tasks in mind at once increases mental load. Because the person cannot fully finish any one task, they live with a constant sense of not keeping up. In a survey conducted in Europe, 46% of workers reported experiencing severe time pressure or work overload, and 37% reported general fatigue caused or worsened by work (EU-OSHA, 2022). In Turkey, 66% of workers say they spent much of the previous day under stress (Gallup, 2026). The expectation of multitasking can be both a cause and a consequence of this burden: an employee under time pressure tries to get things done by splitting tasks, and splitting tasks increases stress.

A team trying to do everything at once often feels that it cannot do anything fully.

Why Does a Multitasking Culture Arise in Organisations?

Multitasking is often not an individual choice but an organisational habit. The main factors feeding this culture are:

• Insufficient staffing: When the tasks of a departed employee are distributed among the others without a new hire, everyone's workload rises.
• Unclear priorities: Where every manager defines their own work as "most urgent", employees are forced to run all tasks at the same time.
• Expectation of instant replies: An environment in which messages are expected to be answered within minutes makes constant task switching unavoidable.
• Meeting overload: Doing other work in meetings becomes a survival strategy for employees with full calendars.
• Rewarding busyness: Seeing an employee who appears online until late and answers every subject instantly as more hard-working reinforces this behaviour.
• Multiple reporting lines: In matrix structures, employees who report to more than one manager can be caught in the middle of competing demands.

Imagine that in a mid-sized manufacturing company, the quality officer is also handling customer complaints, audit preparations and new-employee training. Throughout the day they move constantly between calls from the shop floor, customer emails and audit documents. This picture, which looks very productive from the outside, is in fact a set-up with a high risk of error, exposed to burnout and unsustainable.

A new trap in the age of digital tools and artificial intelligence

Digital tools that have entered working life in recent years have made task switching even easier. Email, messaging, video calls, project tracking and shared documents all sit open on the same screen, each sending its own notifications. Although AI-supported tools speed up some tasks, an expectation can arise that "you're faster now, so you can take on more work". In this way the time gained can be filled straight away with new tasks.

At this point there is a distinction organisations need to pay attention to: a tool speeding up a task does not mean the employee's attention capacity has increased. Checking the output of tools, learning new systems and carrying information between different platforms also require mental effort. When planning digital transformation, how the workload will be redistributed, which tasks will be dropped and how employees will be supported while adapting to new tools should be considered together. Otherwise, instead of increasing productivity, technology can turn into a constantly interrupted and tiring working day.

Hybrid working and the pressure to "be visible"

In teams working hybrid or remotely, employees may be increasingly inclined to reply quickly to every message in order to appear online. This leads to a task-switching cycle that lasts all day. The most practical way to reduce this pressure is for teams to make a clear agreement on shared working hours and response expectations.

Task Load in Terms of Legislation and Work Organisation

Turkish legislation does not regulate this subject by name. However, Article 4 of the Occupational Health and Safety Law No. 6331 requires the employer, when assigning tasks, to take into account the employee's suitability for the job in terms of health and safety. Article 5 of the Law provides for the development of a prevention policy covering the effects of factors related to work organisation and social relationships. Excessive workload, role ambiguity and competing demands can be assessed among the psychosocial sources of hazard mentioned in Article 8 of the Risk Assessment Regulation. The Ministry of Labour and Social Security's (ÇSGB) 2024 Psychosocial Factors Information Guide also lists workload and work pace, and role-related issues in the workplace, among the categories of psychosocial hazard (ÇSGB, 2024).

For this reason, it is more accurate to treat the problem of constant task switching not only as a "time management" issue but as part of work organisation and psychosocial risks.

What Can Be Done Instead of Multitasking? Steps for Managers

1. Make workload visible. Collect the team's tasks on a board or shared list. When it is visible how many tasks everyone is carrying at the same time, overload is noticed more easily.

2. Limit the number of simultaneous tasks. Make it a habit to ask "If you take this on, which one should we postpone?" before a new task is assigned. Reducing the number of projects run at the same time can allow work to be completed faster.

3. Set priorities from a single place. For employees who report to more than one manager, make sure priorities are clarified between the managers; do not expect the employee to resolve the conflict.

4. Create single-task times. Encourage setting aside certain hours of the day for a single task. Muting notifications and not holding meetings during these periods can become a team norm.

5. Set meeting rules. Encourage not doing other work on computers and phones during meetings; in return, keep meetings shorter and fewer.

6. Clarify response times. Put in writing how quickly each type of message is expected to be answered. An employee who knows they do not have to reply to every message instantly can concentrate on their work more comfortably.

7. Group similar tasks. Doing emails, phone call-backs or approvals in batches at set times of the day reduces constant task switching.

8. Review job descriptions. Evaluate additional responsibilities that have built up over the years and that nobody questions. If necessary, redistribute tasks or address the need for staffing.

9. Appreciate results, not busyness. Reward not working until late or keeping up with everything, but the quality of completed work and the team's sustainable pace.

Should we look for "multitasking ability" when hiring?

Some roles do require rapid switching; for example, a shift supervisor or a call-centre team leader has to manage many different demands during the day. In that case, what should be looked for is not the ability to do everything at once, but the ability to set priorities, stay calm and delegate when necessary. Using more realistic wording such as "prioritisation skills" instead of "multitasking" in job adverts also steers candidates' expectations correctly.

How to Start in Your Organisation

1. Needs analysis: Using a short, confidential survey, ask employees how many tasks they run at the same time, the times when they are interrupted most, priority conflicts and how often they feel they cannot keep up. Data on overtime, errors, complaints and staff turnover complete the picture. If a psychosocial risk assessment is being carried out, give workload and role clarity a particular place.

2. Programme: Based on the findings, start organisational arrangements such as prioritisation, meeting structure and communication rules in a pilot unit. Training for managers on managing team workload and holding priority conversations, and an attention and stress management workshop for employees, can be added. You can find a needs analysis and training options tailored to your organisation on the corporate services page.

3. Measurement: After three to six months, look at the same indicators again. The number of completed tasks, error rates, overtime and the change in employees' perception of mental fatigue show the effect of the arrangements. Extend the practices that work to other units.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are some people really better at multitasking?

There are differences in attention capacity and experience between individuals; as some tasks become automatic with practice, it becomes easier to run them together. However, the limits of the human mind in doing two tasks that require attention at the same time are common to all. It should not be forgotten that even people who see themselves as very good at multitasking are affected by the cost of task switching.

Does multitasking lead to burnout?

Multitasking is not on its own the cause of burnout. However, combined with excessive workload, unclear priorities and a constant sense of not keeping up, it can increase chronic work stress and therefore the risk of burnout. The article on preventing employee burnout may be a helpful guide on this subject.

Does taking notes in a meeting or replying to messages count as multitasking?

Taking notes about the meeting is a behaviour that supports attention. However, answering emails about other work during a meeting makes it hard to get value from either the meeting or the work being answered. Shortening meetings and holding them only with the people who are really needed reduces this need.

What should a manager do when an employee says "I can't keep up with everything"?

First of all, this statement should be received not as an admission of inadequacy but as valuable information. The first step is to review the employee's tasks with them, set an order of priority and postpone or delegate some of them. If the struggle has been going on for a long time and is affecting sleep, health or private life, psychological support options can also be discussed.

• #multitasking
• #productivity
• #workload
• #task switching

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Eda Erkan Alapala

Klinik Psikolog. İstanbul Kent Üniversitesi Klinik Psikoloji Tezli Yüksek Lisans mezunu; bilişsel davranışçı terapi, çocuk merkezli oyun terapisi ve çocuk-ergen psikoterapisi alanlarında eğitimlerini tamamlamıştır.

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