Multi-tasking Is Actually A Good Thing

Multi-tasking got a bad name. I think we blamed the wrong thing.

I remember when “multi-tasker” was a compliment. Early in my career, it came up in every job posting, interview, and performance review. Someone who could hold multiple projects, keep several plates spinning, know where everything stood. I was good at this. I liked being good at it.

And the work actually supported it. You’d send an email and wait for a reply. Kick off a project and wait for feedback. There was natural lag between the moving pieces, which meant your brain had time to shift between them without breaking. You could hold five things because none of them needed you at the same second.

Multi-tasking, real multi-tasking, was never about doing five things at once. It was about managing five things in motion. Knowing which one needed you, when, and being able to pick it up without losing the thread.

Then the tools changed. Email replies started coming back instantly. Slack created an expectation that every message deserved a reply in minutes. Phone notifications were impossible. The lag disappeared. Not because the work got harder, but because the interruptions got constant. You weren’t choosing when to switch anymore. You were being pulled.

That’s not multi-tasking. That’s rapid context switching. And it’s brutal. Every forced interruption costs you focus. Your brain needs time to reload, and when the next ping hits before you’ve finished reloading, you just burn cycles. You feel busy. You produce less.

But somewhere along the way, we mixed up the diagnosis. We said “multi-tasking is bad” when we meant “constant interruption is bad.” We threw out the skill because the environment went toxic. That’s like saying cooking is bad because your kitchen is on fire.

I think about this now because of how I work with AI agents.

I’ll have one agent drafting an email I’ve been putting off. Another refactoring a facilitator guide I started half an hour ago. Another analysing survey results from something I ran last month. I kick them off, I move on, I circle back when they’re done.

And it feels like 2005 again, but bigger. The lag is back. Multiple things in motion, none of them needing me at the same second. I can hold the threads, check in when it makes sense, redirect when something comes back wrong. The buffer that the tools took away, agents are quietly handing back.

It’s closer to managing a small team than managing a notification feed. You delegate. You follow up. You course-correct. You don’t hover. Nothing is interrupting you. You’re choosing when to shift your attention, and what you’re shifting to is a finished chunk of work, not a half-formed ping demanding a response.

i remember the first time i subconsciously referred to an agent as my employee

The people who were good at multi-tasking in 2005 are about to be good at it again. Not because anyone rehabilitated the word, but because the environment is finally catching up. We’re going to be juggling more than ever. The difference is we’re sending work out and getting results back, instead of getting dragged sideways by noise.

Multi-tasking was never the problem. We just spent fifteen years in a burning kitchen and forgot we knew how to cook.