Multitasking is just switching fast enough to feel busy and slow enough to miss things.

There is no doing two things at once, only switching between them and paying a small tax each time. The switching is what produces the feeling of being busy, because effort is going somewhere, but almost none of it reaches the work. Meanwhile what gets dropped is the quiet stuff: a detail in the question, a change in somebody’s face.

Take one block this week and do a single thing in it. Homework with the tabs shut, or a conversation with no screen, and time it so you have a number rather than an impression. Most people are startled by how much shorter the honest version is.