← all facts
attention
You pay a steep cognitive price for multitasking.
Switching between tasks significantly increases error rates and lowers processing speed compared to focusing on one task at a time.
When participants switched between tasks, their brain needed time to reconfigure. This 'switch cost' means you never actually multitask; you simply toggle your attention back and forth, losing efficiency with every jump.
You are sacrificing your deep focus for the appearance of productivity.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Rubinstein, Meyer, and Evans, 2001, Journal of Experimental Psychology
- What the check found
- Rubinstein, Meyer, and Evans (2001) is the correct source for the 'switch cost' hypothesis, though the provided text is a summary of the findings rather than a verbatim quote from the paper.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.