Expert warns that task switching creates the illusion of productivity

The heroine of the series “The Playmaker” appears to handle everything at once. As the unexpectedly appointed president of the Los Angeles Waves basketball club, Isla Gordon makes strategic decisions, manages advertising partnerships and negotiates player transfers. She also acts as a therapist for athletes facing personal crises.

She responds to media statements, talks with officials at other clubs, answers work calls, schedules meetings and settles disputes between teammates. Her ability to redirect attention to new challenges may look like an essential leadership skill. Over time, however, rapidly moving between unrelated tasks can damage concentration and performance.

Professor Anna Baczyńska of the Department of Human Resources Management at Kozminski University in Warsaw describes constant switching as “not a sign of modern efficiency, but a very expensive cognitive cost.” She compares it to being ordered to leave one train and board another every five minutes, then being asked why the journey has taken so long.

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Continuous switching between tasks is not a sign of modern efficiency, but a very expensive cognitive cost.

Research cited by the American Psychological Association, including studies by David E. Meyer, Joshua S. Rubinstein and Jeffrey E. Evans of the University of Michigan, shows that switching tasks costs time and fluency while increasing the risk of errors. People may feel they are moving quickly, but often work more slowly and less precisely. A worker can answer emails, take calls, check Teams, revise tables and comment on a presentation throughout the day, yet still finish with the feeling that the most important task remains untouched.

Baczyńska says this is the paradox of task switching: people can feel exhausted at the end of the day while achieving little progress. She also refers to Sophie Leroy’s research on “attention residue,” the lingering attention that remains attached to a previous task and makes it harder to focus fully on the next one.

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It is a bit like someone telling us every five minutes to get off one train and board another, then wondering why we did not arrive on time.