Multitasking and stress: one thing at a time, done or parked

In a 2024 YouTube video, the Italian psychologist and psychotherapist Luca Mazzucchelli listed five everyday habits that add to stress. The third, one Mazzucchelli says most of us know all too well, is multitasking. We try to raise our productivity by doing several things at the same time, the video says, and the practice ends up making us less productive, because it spreads our concentration across tasks and raises the sense of mental overload. The result: less efficient, more mistakes. So stop trying to do several things at once, the advice goes, because:

"la nostra mente non è stata progettata per questo"

In English: "our mind wasn't designed for this"

Luca Mazzucchelli, Luca Mazzucchelli (YouTube), 2024

Mazzucchelli's suggestion instead is to train attention like a muscle, on one task at a time, with distractions set aside.

What the research says

Part of this holds up well, and part of it is more modest than it sounds.

The cost of switching is real. In lab experiments, every switch between tasks cost a little time, and the cost grew when the tasks were more complex (Rubinstein, Meyer and Evans, 2001). The cost in those studies was small per switch. On a real day the switches are bigger: a call, a message, a new request.

The stress part has support too. In one experiment, people who were interrupted made up for it by working faster, and paid for it in more stress, frustration, time pressure and effort (Mark, Gudith and Klocke, 2008). Only the summaries of these two studies are available, so read them as a direction, without numbers.

The idea that some people are worse at focusing because they multitask a lot is shakier. Early lab studies found heavy media multitaskers more easily distracted (Ophir, Nass and Wagner, 2009). A later review of 118 assessments found the overall link small, and on objective performance tests close to nothing (Parry and le Roux, 2021). The case for one thing at a time rests on the switching costs, not on multitasking having changed anyone's brain.

A simpler way through a full day

You don't need a training plan for attention to start. You need a first thing, and a place for the rest.

Batching hasn't been tested as a habit in a trial, so treat it as a starting point.

How this fits the Manage everyday stress program

In the 1h Protocol to Manage Everyday Stress, chapter 2 puts your whole load on one page and has you circle the one that comes first, then do one thing at a time. If your pattern is the Pile-up, too many demands open at once, your own chapter adds "one thing at a time" as a line: do one thing until it's done or parked, then batch the small ones, labeled as a starting point. Chapter 6 lists doing it all at once among the moves that make the moment it all lands worse. The first chapter is free and finds your stress pattern.

Source: Luca Mazzucchelli (YouTube), Ridurre lo stress: 5 cattive abitudini che ti provocano stress, 26 Aug 2024 Research: Rubinstein, Meyer and Evans, 2001 · Mark, Gudith and Klocke, 2008 · Ophir, Nass and Wagner, 2009 · Parry and le Roux, 2021 · Burkeman, The Guardian, 2016