Multitasking: Productivity Superpower or Slow Burnout?

This week’s M word on Ms the Word is multitasking — answering emails while cooking, voice-noting while driving, scrolling while half-watching a film. We call it productivity. But are we actually doing anything well, or have we just gotten very good at being slightly present everywhere and fully present nowhere?

The Honest Truth

The panel agreed almost instantly: multitasking has become second nature, and it’s exhausting. One panellist described trying to slow down for a week and finding it mentally draining in a completely different way.

The pattern is familiar to most parents — physically present with your kids while mentally replying to emails or running through the shopping list, until a child calls you out: “Mum, are you watching?”

As one panellist put it: you get good at what you practice — and we’ve practiced multitasking so much that single-tasking now feels unnatural. Turns out true multitasking isn’t really possible anyway; we’re just switching rapidly between things. The question is: at what cost?

The Real Cost

• Missed moments. Several panellists admitted to “watching” a whole episode with their kids and being unable to recall a single detail of what happened.
• Kids notice. One panellist’s daughter now says, “Mummy, not on your phone unless it’s to take pictures of me” — a gentle but pointed reminder that presence matters.
• It’s contagious. If we model constant divided attention, we risk teaching our children that’s simply how life is run.

What Actually Helps

Time-blocking came up as the most useful practical tool — consciously deciding what you’re focusing on for a set period, whether that’s work, home admin, or time with people you love. But the panel was honest about its limits too: over-scheduling, rebelling against the block when you’re not “in the mood,” and being too ambitious about how much fits into a day are all common pitfalls.

Deciding to stop. One panellist shared how, early in running a business, she gave herself unrealistic same-day response targets — until she chose to simply stop, communicate a more realistic timeframe, and let go of the pressure. Her takeaway: when you stop doing things, you often realise they weren’t as important as you thought.

Everything in moderation, not all-or-nothing. The panel pushed back on the idea that multitasking is inherently bad. Voice-noting a friend while folding washing, or listening to a podcast on a walk, can make mundane tasks more enjoyable — and that’s fine. The goal isn’t eliminating multitasking altogether; it’s noticing where it’s genuinely working for you, and where it’s quietly costing you connection or presence.

The Quickfire Question

Asked what one truly meaningful part of their day looked like if stripped back to basics, the panel’s answers all pointed to the same theme: small pockets of real connection — a school walk, a post-pickup chat in the car, half an hour at the park phone-free. Nothing elaborate. Just undivided attention.

Try This Week

The panel each committed to one small single-tasking challenge:

• Driving without voice notes
• One phone-free hour at home
• Eating one meal a week without a screen or distraction in sight

The Takeaway

Mindfulness doesn’t have to be complicated — sometimes it’s simply doing one thing at a time. Multitasking isn’t the enemy, but it’s worth noticing when it’s helping you get more out of your day, and when it’s quietly robbing you of the moments that actually matter.

What’s one thing you could single-task this week?

Transcript:

Welcome back to Ms the Word. And today’s M word is multitasking. Perhaps you’re doing it right now, or as I like to call it, having 47 tabs open in your brain at the same time. So we answer emails while making dinner, we voice note while driving, we scroll while watching a film — or maybe this episode, stop scrolling — and we reply while half listening to our children. We call it productivity, but are we actually doing anything well, or have we just become very good at being slightly present everywhere and fully present nowhere? So panel, what is your take on this?

I agree 100%. I’ve got tabs open in my brain at all times. I’ve tried, the last week, to try and slow down and just do one thing at a time. How’s that going? You’re draining mentally, roaming. But I notice I need to do it, especially for my kids, because they can pick up on it — like, I’ll be there, but in my head I’ve replied to 10 emails, I’ve done the food shop, and they’re looking at me, my daughter going, “Mum, are you watching?” I’m like, “Yeah, are you not seeing? I’m here, I’m physically here.” But it’s really hard to stop doing that.

So the brain goes somewhere else, though, doesn’t it? I have that even if I’m physically with them, I’m not, you know, and they can see the second it just goes. So yeah, I think we’ve got so good at multitasking, like they say, you get good at what you practice, and I think we’ve got really good at — and apparently you can’t actually multitask, it’s just that you can flip really quickly from different things, and I think we’re really good at it, but at what cost? And it’s like the opposite of mindfulness, isn’t it? So we’ve almost got to unlearn and get good at practicing being focused some of the time, because I wouldn’t want to stop — I almost think it’s a superpower in some respects, but perhaps we’ve got too good at it, that we now just can’t be present, can’t concentrate, and be firing in all different directions at all times. So yeah, it’s tiring.

I can see the downfall as well, as in, I’m the queen of going into a room and going, “Right, my goal is to clean this room,” started, but as I’ve left to go to the kitchen, I found something else that’s shiny and I’ve emptied that out, and then all of a sudden I’ve got a whole house that’s upside down, I’m like, “Oh, don’t want to do it now.” But it’s because I’ve got distracted because I’ve got so many tabs. Yeah, and it’s so true — it’s like you do your teeth and then you think, “Oh, I need to order some more of that cream, I’m nearly running out,” and then you go to your — and then before you know it — started a wash, opened an email, sent half a thing. It is overstimulating.

It is. But I think also, when you’re on the receiving end of that, if you’re with someone and every other minute they’re doing something else, or eyes everywhere else, it’s not nice, is it? No, it’s not. And yet we are doing that to our children and teaching them that’s how you run life almost.

It does take me a decision, which I feel like it shouldn’t, but it does — actually, for example, put the phone in another room and I am now doing just this, and then I might achieve that or I might not, but it’s not coming naturally anymore to do one thing, even whether it’s to do with the kids or not — it has to be decided, “This is what I’m doing.” I have been challenging myself, like you, to do that, and it does feel good once you complete said task. I can only do it in small bite-sized chunks — like, I am going to drive and pick up, I’m not going to voice note anyone, even though there’s poor people I want to voice note, I’m just going to drive there. But the mind does still wander — you know, I’ll be, “Mum, come and watch Bluey,” and I know I’ve watched the whole episode, I couldn’t tell you what happened. I watched the duck cake one the other day, and I need to go and watch the duck cake episode again, because I don’t know what happened to the duck cake — I know the dad had to make a duck cake, and I went somewhere else, but I sat there. I wasn’t there, and I couldn’t even tell you what happened.

I’m the same with the reading — I can read a whole book with the children, and then you get to the questions at the end, “What did Flossy do with the hat?” — or Floppy, or whoever it is — and I’m like, “I have no idea.” Oh, Mum, it blew off in the wind — brilliant, I don’t know if they’re right or wrong. But our kids call us out on it sometimes, don’t they? So, quite embarrassed to admit, really, but I’ll take my daughter swimming and it’s half an hour, I’m sitting there watching her — and I am watching, but also it’s half an hour to perhaps get back to some of the things I hadn’t got back to before. And she’s recently started saying, “Mummy, not on your phone unless it’s to take pictures of me,” and she’ll call out across the whole swimming pool, “Mummy, not on your phone.” “No, no, no, I’m not — I’m taking a picture.” So clearly I need to listen to her and watch her do her swimming fully. But also, I’d like to see her try when she’s married with two kids. But it is true.

Okay, viewer question: “I’m constantly juggling work, kids, house, messages, everything. I feel like I’m surviving but not enjoying any of it. How do I slow down without everything falling apart?” This is from Carol.

I think time-blocking has really been helpful for me — enabling you to make those conscious decisions about what you’re focusing on now, you know, a bit of time for work, a bit of time perhaps for life admin, home admin, children, yourself, however it looks, and challenging yourself to stick to the thing that you set. Oh, isn’t it so — do you know what? I time-block, and I get to it, and I think, “I don’t want to do that award submission, I’m not in the mood,” so I will leave it to the last 10 minutes of my time block and then have no time — I really rebel against it. Why is that? Is that ADHD? Yeah. I do that as well then, I don’t have ADHD, but you just feel like, “I’m not ready to do this yet, because I’m still in this, and I want to finish that thing and get that done.” So I think time-blocking does have to have some flex to it, but it does make you more mindful about what you want to do. But also, as high achievers, you can tend to time-block out too much — you think, “I’m going to get these 10 tasks done today,” and in reality you’ve only got time for four or five, and you have to be more disciplined towards yourself. I find that the hardest — like, I’d write a to-do list and go, “Oh, it’s only got three things on it, I had another 10,” I won’t do it just because — you know, you’re never gonna — I love your awareness. Yeah, oh, it just looks a bit like — I’ll just make something up, and they’ll be like, “Oh, I didn’t achieve any of it, I’ll hold myself back.” Ain’t that weird? Yeah, that is so weird. Challenge yourself, not to practice.

What can we do? I think, like I said, get good at what you practice, so I guess we’ve got to practice the other thing sometimes. And what I’ll say about this is just — there’s so many things we could do all the time, and you could run yourself ragged being all that busy, but what if you just didn’t do it at all, right? Most of the time, no one’s going to die. So let’s just stop it. And I think this was something I had to come to grips with in the early days of having a business, because I wanted to get back to everybody same day or next — that was my own personal target — and I was killing myself to do it. And then I thought, well, actually, I’m not going to do that, and I’ll tell them from the outset it’s going to be this amount of time, and I’m always quicker than that. But I had to stretch my own expectations of myself and say, actually, it’s unrealistic, I can’t do all these things in a day, I’m just going to stop. And I think sometimes when you stop doing things, you realise they’re not as important as perhaps you thought they were.

It is true — I mean, when I couldn’t do so much in recovery, which is only a few weeks ago, I remember thinking, “I’m going to embrace this, I’m going to take this into my life.” It hasn’t lasted longer than four weeks because the pace has picked me back up again. But you’re right, because things didn’t get done. And did anyone die? Everyone was here. Yeah, everyone is here. And things get a bit more messy and a bit more shabby and a bit more delayed, of course they do. But so what — so what if you just lived your life like that and took away all those layers of stress?

Yeah, they say as well, there’s that thing — is it Obama, where he tried to limit what he’d got to think about, so he wore the same suit every day, because it was just one thing off the list. So it’s like certain things — I think sometimes meal prep can do that a little bit, where you eat the same thing every day because it’s another thing off your list. I like those. Yeah, so there’s certain things — outfits, you always call me out on, if I find something I just stick with that, wear it in different colours. Very entrepreneurial for three months, is it?

We wear multitasking like a badge of honour — she can do it all, but at what cost? So, do your children call you out? You mentioned this earlier — do your children call you out? Yeah, oh yeah, definitely.

And is multitasking robbing us of memory-making moments, or is it masking the mundane? Such a good question, because to me, some aspects of life are boring. If I’m putting away baskets of washing, I would love to stick my headphones in and voice note a friend, because then it’s a little bit more productive — I’m multitasking, and I’m having more fun while I’m doing it. Otherwise, what am I going to do, just look at the washing, smell it? I don’t care about it. There are so many mundane things that we do.

I mean, I think walking — I know you disagree with this, I’m ready for the onslaught — I think walking is mundane, I like the fact that I’m ticking off my steps, productivity tick, good for me, tick. Voice-noting or doing something else while walking suits me. I’ve tried to do when we say, “Just mindfully walk and look around,” and I think, “I’m so bored, I’m so bored, I’m so bored.” But I’m only saying that as a practice, I don’t mean do it every time. No, but you enjoy it, don’t you — like, you enjoy looking at the tree, and I’ve tried to look at the tree, but I just find it boring.

Isn’t it — everything in moderation, right? So I think if you’re going out walking every day, you’ve seen the same tree 10 times, you might notice, “Oh, it’s got a bit more blossom today,” that’s sort of it, isn’t it? But I agree, you can use that time to listen to music, to a podcast, to phone a friend — I always ring people on the way back from the school run, because that’s a chunk of time when I can actually invest in one of my friends or relationships, I think that feeds my soul, that then becomes a nice thing rather than just a boring walk club. But nature does teach us so much.

Yeah, I think it’s like — what expectation have you got, as in when it’s working for you to multitask, keep going. And then moments where you think, “Oh, this is becoming problematic now,” that’s the stuff to change. So if you’re walking and voice-noting and you’re like, “Brilliant, I’ve ticked five things and I’ve got my steps in,” that’s room to celebrate. But if there’s other space in your day or week that you’re like, “I have had no mindfulness time,” or “I’m not present with the children I want to be, I’m not present with my partner I want to be, my mum, whoever it is” — then those are the moments that you want to practise. So it’s not like we live on a Tibetan mountain not speaking to anyone for a month — that’s not our life, and it’s not going to work like that. So I think there’s room for both.

Okay, so quickfire — if you stripped your day back to one truly meaningful thing, what would it be?

I love my morning school walk with the boys. It’s just such a nice bit of time — it’s all stressy to get out of the house and you’ve got to do it, but once we leave, we walk, it’s a mile each way, and we just talk. And that would be so easy for me to skip, and sometimes I have to be, because I’ve forgotten to pay the school or do the thing — there’s a thing that has to be done — but that is real protected time for me that really feeds my soul and connects me to my children. I think that’s lovely.

Mine would be at some point in the day with the children. So I would imagine that time being normally after school, or obviously every weekend it could be at any time, but that moment where we’re maybe getting a cuddle or having a little laugh about something, but just that connected time, whatever that looks like.

I would say school pick-up, as long as I’ve then — did work on a certain level, not organised — picking them up and trying a different thing of picking up individually, and just having even 15 minutes of “How was your day” walking to the car, and now that obviously it’s summertime, being able to pick them up, go straight to the park and just have half an hour of fresh air, I’m not on my phone because I can’t be doing any washing, it’s just me in the park with them. That’s so nice. I really want to make a joke, but I won’t. It would be something with the kids — I can’t actually harness one thing, but I am the same as you, it’s non-negotiable for me to walk them to school if I can. If there’s some reason I can’t, I think you find out a lot in those little chats, don’t you — it’s then that they just offload, don’t they, things just come out. Well, just when the mental — asleep — yes, why is that? “7 p.m., oh, I’ve got to tell you, I’ve got to tell you my deepest feeling that you must listen to.”

Okay, so mindfulness sounds fluffy until you realise it’s just doing one thing at a time. So question to you guys — what is one thing you could start doing single-task this week? Put it in the comments so we can give you a thumbs up and say well done. What’s one thing you’re going to do this week without voice notes or any other noise?

I’ll drive — I’ll drive, one drive, and I’ll voice note when I get there. Done it. Okay, hey, it was told you.

I’ve got quite a busy week where I’m actually out the house a bit more than usual, so I’m going to make the most of the time I am at home with my family — put the phone in another room and make sure that I have at least an hour that I don’t even acknowledge it. Good, love that.

I think I’m going to do that, and yeah, it’s not different, but I am a bit of a slave to the phone, so I think I just need to physically remove it away from me, turn it off, and actually just have that time.

I’m going to try and eat one meal this week without looking at my phone while doing it, or replying to a text, or listening to a voice note — like, tuning in there, I’m going to concentrate on what I’m eating. Well, that’s meant to be really good for you, isn’t it, and just good for your digestion, good for limiting the amount that you’re going to eat, your calorie intake, because then you’ll be more mindful about how it tastes when you’re full — all of these things. So that’s like a pro diet tip as well. I did well, green tick for me.

Yeah, my face says how alien that feels to me — as you were saying it, I was like, I’ve never even thought of doing that, and not using my food time as a really good time to do a load of other things. So yeah, shows where I’m at with that.

Thank you so much for watching. We’ll see you next time.