We love multitasking because when we do multiple things at once, we feel more productive and experience greater emotional satisfaction. An internal voice in our subconscious mind says, “Look at everything I am accomplishing. Look at all of the boxes I am checking off my list.” In a society that encourages and rewards “optimization” and “multiple processes,” we can’t help but want to “optimize” ourselves. Unfortunately, our brains don’t work like computers. For 99 percent of us,1 effective multitasking is nothing more than effective delusional thinking.
