research is unkind to the idea. The brain does not run two demanding tasks in parallel. It switches between them, fast, and pays a toll each time it crosses over.
What switching actually costs
Psychologists call it the switch cost: the small lag and error spike that occur whenever attention is yanked from one task to another. Each jump is brief, sometimes a fraction of a second. The problem is volume. Across a workday of constant pinging, those fractions stack into hours of foggy, half-present effort. You feel busy and
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