Hopeful Thinking

Allow me to begin with a premise: Multitasking does not exist. You can’t do it. No one actually can.  That’s not to say you don’t think you can do it. Almost everyone thinks they can multitask. But study after study shows us that not only is the act of multitasking impossible, our constant attempts to make it so are hurting us. Yes, it’s possible to switch back-and-forth between different tasks to the point that you think you’re handling them both. And you are, but only to a degree. It’s the switching part that’s the problem. At least, some of it.  It takes time for our brain to switch back-and-forth. It also takes an emotional toll on us in the process of recalibrating the parameters of one task we were just working on to the other. Even going back-and-forth between working on the computer and answering the phone requires two different sets of parameters we have to consider. Even though it might not seem to take much time at all, only fractions of a second, the brain undergoe...