"I tried juggling five things at once. I dropped all six." says everyone, at some point
Meet Ava: The Burnt-Out Multitasker
Ava sipped her fourth coffee of the morning, glancing between a Zoom call, a Slack ping, her inbox screaming with unread emails, and—oh wait—is that her air fryer beeping?
Welcome to modern productivity: glorified chaos dressed in a to-do list.
Ava thought she was a productivity ninja. But the truth? She was a digital squirrel-busy, distracted, and exhausted. Her day ended not with satisfaction, but with the faint suspicion that she had done a lot of something and finished absolutely nothing.
Enter: Single-tasking. A concept so radical, it’s practically vintage.
Rewind: The Ancient Art of Doing Just One Thing
Before smartphones, we had rotary phones. Before that, pigeons. Before that?
People just did one thing at a time.
Writing a letter meant just writing a letter.
Reading a book meant escaping into a world with no tabs open.
But somewhere along the way, doing one thing started to feel lazy. As if the only way to earn your stripes was to be in five meetings while building a pitch deck, scheduling a dentist appointment, and folding laundry with your feet.
Spoiler: Brains don’t work like that.
The Science Behind the Magic
Studies from Stanford, MIT, and every exhausted human with a brain agree: multitasking doesn’t work.
In fact, it can,
- Reduce productivity by 40%
- Increase mistakes by 50%
- Lower IQ temporarily more than losing a night's sleep
Multitasking isn’t productivity. It’s switch-tasking. And switching? That’s expensive brain real estate.
Then Ava stumbled across a video on The Radical Power of Doing One Thing at a Time, and she finally decided to try single-tasking. And then, magic happened. She wasn’t chasing her thoughts anymore. She was catching them.
Say Hello to Noah: The Modern Monk
Noah works in fintech. His calendar is usually a Tetris game played by caffeine-addled squirrels.
But he made one change: time-boxed single-tasking.
He now,
- Turns off notifications
- Schedules “deep work” sprints (with Lo-fi beats)
- Sets a timer: 25 minutes. One task. No cheating.
- Takes breaks (Yes, that’s legal.)
His productivity didn’t just improve. His sanity returned from its extended vacation.
The Reality of Our Time: Multitasking is a Lie We Bought
Social media loves showing people “doing it all.” But most of it is an illusion.
Behind the screens are unfinished tasks, mental burnout, and a lot of “I’ll circle back on that.”
Single-tasking isn’t sexy. It doesn’t come with dopamine hits. But it builds something better: flow.
Flow is when writers forget to eat, coders forget the time, and designers forget the world. You don’t find flow in chaos. You find it in presence.
The Single-Tasking Starter Kit
Want to join the rebellion? Start here:
- Pick one task. Not five. Not three. One.
- Set a timer for 25 minutes. This is your fortress of focus.
- Turn off notifications. Your phone can survive a short nap.
- When you’re done, then switch. You’ve earned it.
- Celebrate small wins. Single-tasking is a muscle; flex it gently.
Ava & Noah Today
Ava now finishes her tasks before dinner. She even tastes her food.
Noah built a side hustle writing newsletters about productivity - with time to spare for dog walks and bad reality TV.
Neither of them is “doing it all.” They’re doing what matters. One task at a time.
Why This Matters in 2025
The AI age promises more tools, more speed, more everything.
But here’s the twist: in the flood of automation, human attention is the rarest resource.
Single-tasking isn’t resistance. It’s wisdom. It’s how we reclaim our energy, our time, and our creativity. It’s how we remind ourselves that we are not machines. We’re humans, and we were built for focus.
You don’t need to do more. You need to do what matters-one quiet, focused task at a time.
Go ahead. Close this tab.
Do one thing.
Do it well.
Repeat.