In an era of mass distraction, we have no choice but to keep juggling every aspect of our lives. But we could at least stop heroising the process
A number of the 37 open tabs on my laptop are currently devoted to trying to substantiate various pop culture claims about multitasking. Does it increase cortisol levels or reduce your IQ by an amount twice that of smoking marijuana? Does it make you less productive or less empathetic?
I struggled to tease this out. I started by answering an email about union membership in Chile, updating a spreadsheet and paying some bills. After that, I forgot what I was doing for a while and stared at my phone until I became enraged by a bluebottle (and decided to find out whether “bluebottles make you homicidal” is one of the 72 Japanese microseasons: it isn’t).
