If you've ever watched a film while scrolling your phone and felt weirdly drained afterwards, that's not laziness — it's what researchers are calling toxic multitasking. A recent feature, drawing on consultants and neuroscientists, explains why constantly juggling tasks and screens leaves us exhausted, irritable and unable to focus, and offers practical ways to break the habit.
The core problem is "context switching". Your brain doesn't reset instantly when you move between tasks, explains psychologist Deborah Chapman, who compares it to reading two books at once — you don't absorb twice as much, you just keep losing your place in both. Neuroscientist Kay Linker notes that digital multitasking, like watching TV while scrolling TikTok, actively reduces your ability to handle multiple inputs, affecting your sleep and wellbeing.
Not all multitasking is bad. Linker says once a task becomes automatic — listening to a podcast on a walk, phoning a friend on a commute — your brain can process in parallel. The damage comes from "task switching" between demanding activities, which drains focus and control. The fallout includes brain fog, burnout, irritability and a reduced ability to connect with people around you. Chapman ties it to hustle culture: constant pressure to value output over quality, with Ashish Kothari of Happiness Squad adding that we've essentially become "dopamine addicts", stuck in a fight-flight-freeze state.
How do you know if you have a problem? Kothari suggests counting how often you pick up your phone — most people exceed 150 times a day — timing yourself doing nothing to see how long you last, or checking your wearable's high-stress readings. A shorter tell: if a quick question from a colleague makes you want to snap, your brain is likely overloaded.
The fixes are refreshingly simple. Meditation and mindfulness get top billing as foundational for focus. Practise single-tasking — one activity like reading or writing for an hour or more. Design your environment: silence notifications, close browser tabs, keep your phone out of sight, and keep a scratch pad nearby so stray thoughts don't interrupt your flow. Kothari recommends a device called Brick, a tile that blocks apps or your whole phone. At work, agree norms for protected deep-work time. And take genuine brain breaks — a walk or a stretch away from all screens, not a hop from laptop to phone.
Why does this matter to travellers? Because holidays are where the habit shows up most clearly — watching the sunset with one eye on your phone, or answering work pings at the pool. Time off is the ideal moment to practise single-tasking: one screen, one activity, one long lunch. It also means your next trip can actually leave you rested rather than just relocated. A true break, as Chapman puts it, means stepping away from screens altogether. Most people notice an immediate improvement in focus and mental energy once they make the deliberate switch — and a holiday is as good a place as any to start.
