I need to confess something before I teach you anything.
Right now, as I write this, my laptop is open on my desk with Claude Code running on multiple projects. Over on my desktop I’ve got two more AI tools going, a chat window and a work app, and I have been jumping between them all day. I’ve got multiple different projects moving at the same time, and if you looked over my shoulder you’d think I was some kind of high-output machine.
I’m not. I’m doing all of them worse than I would do any one of them alone. And the worst part is, I know it. I teach focus for a living, and here I sit, breaking my own rules, because these AI tools have made it so easy to run five things at once that it feels like leverage instead of what it actually is. (I know, I know. It’s not an excuse…keep reading.)
The lie we’re going to reveal today is not that multitasking exists. Of course it exists, I’m doing it right now. The lie is that it works. It doesn’t. The lie is that running five things at once means you’re getting more done, when the truth is the exact opposite. I’m living that lie this week, so I’m the last guy who gets to preach at you. But I can at least show you the research, tell you the truth, and hand you the thing that pulls me back out when I catch myself.
You’re Not Actually Doing Two Things at Once
Start with what’s really happening in your head, because it isn’t doing what you think it is.
Your brain can’t do two demanding things at the same time. It just can’t. What it does instead is switch, very very quickly, back and forth between them, and every time it switches it pays a little tax. Researchers call it a switch cost. You flip from writing an email to answering a Signal message and back, and each flip costs you a few seconds of reorienting, a little bit of what you were holding in your head, a little bit of momentum.
Do that a few times and it feels productive. Do it all day and you end up like I’ve been this week: busy from morning to night, and somehow not sure what actually got finished.
The Study That Proves Multitasking Doesn’t Work
Back in 2009, a group of researchers at Stanford led by a professor named Clifford Nass decided to study heavy multitaskers. They took about a hundred students and split them into two groups, the heavy multitaskers and the light ones, and then they ran them through a series of tests.
The researchers expected the heavy multitaskers to be good at it. All that practice juggling streams of information had to build some kind of skill, right? That was the whole assumption going in.
The opposite turned out to be true. The heavy multitaskers were worse at filtering out distractions. They were worse at holding things in memory. And the big thing that the study revealed is that these “heavy multitaskers” were, in fact, worse at the one thing you’d assume they’d have mastered: switching between tasks. The people who switched constantly were the worst switchers in the room. Nass had a line for it. He said they were “suckers for irrelevancy.” Every shiny distraction pulled them right off course.
And it got worse. The scattered thinking showed up even when they weren’t multitasking. Sit a heavy multitasker down to do one single thing, and their brain still worked worse than the person who didn’t juggle. The habit had rewired them. They’d trained their own minds to be scattered, and the scatter didn’t switch off just because the other screens did.
Ironically, the people who multitask the most are the worst at it, and the damage follows them even into the moments they’re trying to focus.
An Ancient Proverb Reveals a Humorous Truth
None of this is new to me, which is exactly why I’m embarrassed to be living it this week. (And I even knew I was planning on writing about multitasking, yet I still fell prey to its allure.)
There’s an old saying: “The man who chases two rabbits catches neither.” Most entrepreneurs aren’t just chasing two rabbits, they’re tending a whole yard full of rabbit pens, with a little attention sprinkled across a dozen things, and in the end almost nothing gets caught. That’s me this week: pens everywhere, rabbits running loose.
Why This Got Harder in 2026
I want to be honest about the new wrinkle, because it’s the reason I got sucked back in.
The AI tools I use are genuinely incredible. They’re real leverage, and I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’d give them up or suggest that you should either. But they’ve also removed the last bit of friction that used to force me to focus. It used to be that doing three things meant physically starting and stopping three things, and the effort of that switching kept me somewhat honest. Now I can spin up three parallel workstreams in about ten seconds, and the temptation to run all of them at once is enormous.
The tool isn’t the problem. I want to be clear about that. The tool is a gift. The problem is the total absence of any boundary around how I use it. I flew home from speaking at a conference in Pensacola this week, sat down at my desk, and within an hour I had every screen going at once like a man who’d never taught a single thing about focus in his life.
The Golden Cage of Looking Busy
This is where the gold blinds you.
Running five things at once feels like being a high-capacity operator. It feels like the AI is multiplying you, like you’re finally the kind of person who can keep a dozen plates spinning. It looks impressive. It feels impressive. That feeling is the gold.
The cage is that you’re doing all of it worse, keeping less of it in your head, and quietly training your brain to crave the switching so that real focus starts to feel unbearable. It’s the same trap I described in the flex is the cage, just wearing a different disguise.
What looks like leverage is actually working against you. You’re not getting more done. You’re getting more started and less finished, and you’re paying for it with the quality of your own mind.
Busy is not the same as effective, which is exactly why I wrote that you’re not productive, you’re just busy. The gold is the lie. The busier the AI lets you look, the easier it is to miss that you’ve walked yourself right into the cage.
How I Pull Myself Back Out
So this is what I do when I catch myself living the lie, and what I’m recommitting to this week right along with you.
It’s a system I built called the 10-Block Weekly Method, and it’s stupidly simple. Five workdays. Two blocks a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Ten blocks total for the week. That’s the whole thing.
Each block gets one theme and one purpose. Related work batched together, writing with writing, calls with calls, admin with admin. Hard edges on both sides, so when the block ends, that focus ends and the next one begins. And at least two or three blocks a week get marked “Do Not Disturb”, notifications off, door closed, one thing only.
The magic isn’t in the blocks. It’s in the permission it gives you to stop switching. When you’re in the block, you’re allowed to ignore everything else, because everything else has its own block coming. That’s what kills the rabbit-pen problem. One rabbit at a time, inside the fence you built for it.
I’m usually good at this, but honestly, I haven’t got this mastered. This week is proof I don’t. Sometimes I feel like I’m chasing 53 rabbits at once. But every time I drift back into the mess, the 10-Block is the thing that pulls me out, and it’ll do the same for you.
Words of Wisdom
“Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you.” – Proverbs 4:25
Solomon wasn’t writing about laptops and AI tools, but he understood the human tendency to look everywhere at once. Eyes forward. Gaze straight ahead. One thing in front of you at a time. That’s not just old wisdom, it’s the same conclusion the researchers reached three thousand years later, and it’s the thing I have to keep relearning.
What to Do Next
If you saw yourself anywhere in this, start with one week. Not a whole new life, just one week built on 10 blocks instead of a hundred open tabs.
I put the whole system, including a template you can print and use, at therealjasonduncan.com/10block. Grab it, block out next week, and see what it feels like to catch one rabbit at a time.
And if you want to talk through where your focus is actually leaking and what it’s costing your business, you can book a call with me directly at therealjasonduncan.com/talk.
– The Real Jason Duncan