In an age of relentless notifications, pop-up messages, and the never-ending ping of group chats, the ability to focus has become a superpower. The modern professional world often rewards speed, adaptability, and the appearance of busyness. But in the pursuit of doing everything at once, we’ve slowly forgotten the deep, transformative value of doing one thing—really well.
Enter the battle between Deep Work and Multitasking, two radically different mindsets that shape how we approach our time, energy, and effectiveness.
Multitasking is often glorified as a badge of honor. People boast about answering emails during meetings, taking calls while driving, or juggling five browser tabs at once. At first glance, it appears efficient—more output in less time. But beneath the surface, multitasking is more illusion than innovation.
Neuroscience tells us that the brain doesn’t truly multitask; it task-switches. Every time you jump from writing a report to checking Instagram, your brain incurs a cognitive cost known as “attention residue.” You leave a bit of your focus behind with every switch, making your return to the original task slower and less efficient.
One famous Stanford study found that people who multitask frequently are actually worse at filtering irrelevant information and have a harder time switching between tasks. The very skill they think they’re improving—productivity—is undermined by the practice itself.
Multitasking can lead to:
Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, defines deep work as “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit.” This kind of focused effort creates new value, improves skills, and is hard to replicate.
Consider the surgeon. In the operating room, there is no room for multitasking. You want your surgeon’s full attention on your heart valve, not half-listening to a podcast or answering emails. The stakes are too high, and precision matters too much. While most of us aren’t in the OR every day, the analogy is a powerful one: meaningful, high-stakes work requires undivided attention.
Deep work enables:
When you’re in a state of deep work, hours can fly by unnoticed. You enter what psychologists call flow, a state of energized focus where you are fully immersed in the task at hand. This is where some of your best thinking, creating, and problem-solving occurs.
Now, multitasking isn’t entirely villainous. There are moments when it’s not only acceptable, but efficient. Listening to a podcast while folding laundry, catching up on emails during a train commute, or doing light admin work while monitoring a slow-moving Zoom call—these examples demonstrate that low-stakes, low-cognitive tasks can sometimes be layered.
But even here, context matters. If you find that your day is an endless string of shallow tasks stitched together with distractions, you may be filling time rather than creating value. True productivity isn’t about how much you do in a day—it’s about what you do and the depth with which you do it.
Creating space for deep work requires intention. Here are some simple ways to reclaim focus in your day:
1. Schedule Deep Work Time – Block out uninterrupted time in your calendar as you would a meeting. Make it sacred.
2. Silence Notifications – Turn off alerts, badges, and unnecessary dings. Your attention is more valuable than a dopamine hit.
3. Create a Ritual – Start your deep work session with a ritual: a specific place, a cup of tea, a moment of silence—something that tells your brain, now we focus.
4. Track Your Time – Notice how often you switch tasks. Apps like RescueTime or even a simple journal can reveal how fragmented your attention might be.
5. Batch Shallow Work – Group admin tasks into a single time slot so they don’t leak into your focus windows.
We live in a world that often rewards immediacy over impact. But the best ideas, the most important work, and the deepest insights don’t emerge in fragmented moments. They come from sustained attention, from thinking deeply and deliberately about what matters.
So the next time you find yourself toggling between tabs or checking your phone mid-conversation, ask yourself: Is this the best use of my attention? And if it isn’t, consider carving out a slice of your day for deep, meaningful work.
Because in a world full of noise, focus is a competitive advantage—and a deeply human one.
