The multi-tasking founder

“Another phenomenon in the not too distant future is square tomatoes, which, after all, could be more easily packaged by machine — and fit better in sandwiches.” – Research and Development Chief at Deere & Co

The Founder’s Superpower: Not Multitasking

For years we’ve been sold a charming myth.

Women, we’re told, can juggle ten things at once — cooking dinner, organizing school lunches, answering emails, repainting the ceiling, and taking a phone call — all simultaneously.

Meanwhile, the man in the story begs for silence while attempting to fry a single egg without catastrophe.

It’s amusing imagery.

It’s also wrong.

Neuroscience has made something very clear: multitasking, as we imagine it, does not exist.

The brain cannot perform multiple cognitively demanding tasks at the same time. What we call multitasking is actually task-switching — rapidly moving attention from one activity to another. Each switch carries a cost. Focus drops. Errors increase. Time expands. Stress compounds.

And despite the popular belief that women are naturally superior multitaskers, there is no reliable evidence showing a meaningful biological difference. The myth persists because it feels culturally convenient — not because it is scientifically valid.

For years, I admired people who appeared to juggle multiple responsibilities effortlessly. I thought they were operating at a higher level. I even criticized myself for only being able to focus on one thing at a time.

When I’m writing and someone asks, “What shall we have for dinner?” I genuinely do not hear it. I am inside the paragraph. The thought must be finished before I can surface.

The question escalates.

“Hello? Anyone home?”

Still nothing — until the sentence is complete.

I used to feel guilty about that. As if my inability to instantly pivot meant I lacked some modern executive superpower.

But the research says the opposite.

Deep focus is not a flaw.

It is an advantage.

And for a founder, it may be one of the most valuable competitive edges you can develop.

In a world addicted to notifications, fragmented attention, and constant digital interruption, the ability to do one thing — fully, completely, without distraction — is rare.

And rare is valuable.

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Multitasking is something we have been encouraged to practice for decades. It has been worn like a badge of honor — especially in entrepreneurial culture.

But physiologically, it is impossible.

When we believe we are multitasking, we are actually doing what psychologists call context switching — rapidly shifting attention between tasks. It feels productive. It feels dynamic. It feels impressive.

In reality, it is inefficient single-tasking performed badly on multiple fronts.

John Medina, in Brain Rules, highlights research showing that when we attempt to multitask, our error rate increases dramatically — by as much as 50 percent — and it can take nearly twice as long to complete tasks.

Twice as long.

Half as accurate.

That is not productivity. That is cognitive self-sabotage.

Yet when we think of a start-up founder, we often imagine someone juggling marketing, product development, fundraising, hiring, operations, customer service — all at once.

As solo founders especially, we assume multitasking is required.

It is not.

What is required is discipline.

When the brain handles a single task, the prefrontal cortex sets the goal — “Call the manufacturing vendor and confirm delivery timelines.” The rest of the brain aligns behind that objective. Action and intention synchronize.

But introduce a second task, and the brain splits resources. Studies show that when people are forced to handle two demanding activities, the hemispheres divide the workload. Capacity drops.

Add a third task, and performance collapses. Participants begin forgetting one of the tasks entirely. Error rates triple.

This is not a personality flaw.
It is biology.

Talking on the phone while driving feels manageable — until reaction time slows at precisely the wrong moment. Checking email during a strategy session feels efficient — until you miss the one insight that could have changed the trajectory of your company.

The brain does not divide and conquer.

It divides and weakens.

The Founder’s Discipline

To work efficiently, we must single-task.

No exceptions.

This sounds counterintuitive in a one-person company. You are responsible for everything. You oversee multiple functions. You wear every hat.

But overseeing multiple functions does not mean working on them simultaneously.

It means practicing what I call task discipline.

If marketing and manufacturing both demand attention, write them down. Put them on a whiteboard. On paper. On a list. Make them visible.

Then choose one.

Finish it.

Strike it off.

Move to the next.

Writing tasks down may sound old-fashioned in a world of apps and dashboards, but the principle is timeless: free your brain from remembering so it can focus on executing.

So many solo founders make the same mistake. They sit on a manufacturing conference call while scanning marketing websites, replying to messages, and checking analytics dashboards.

They feel busy.

They feel important.

They feel productive.

They are not.

Researcher Zhen Wang found that heavy multitaskers often feel more emotionally satisfied — they experience a rush from juggling activity — but their performance consistently declines. Students who multitasked heavily reported feeling efficient, yet their academic results were significantly worse than those who focused on one task at a time.

Multitasking creates the illusion of momentum.

But output drops.

There is another trap.

Multitaskers look impressive from the outside. We see someone answering emails, taking calls, scribbling notes, and we think, That’s incredible. I wish I could do that.

We do not see the hidden cost — the missed details, the shallow thinking, the increased errors, the slower completion times.

So we push ourselves harder. More tabs. More notifications. More switching.

And productivity quietly declines.

Clifford Nass, a Stanford researcher, once assumed that heavy multitaskers must develop compensating skills — perhaps superior filtering ability, faster switching capacity, stronger working memory.

The data showed the opposite.

The more people multitasked, the worse they became at filtering irrelevant information. The worse they became at managing tasks. The worse their memory performance became.

In other words:

Multitasking does not build a stronger brain.

It trains a distracted one.

And distraction is lethal for founders.

Because breakthroughs — strategic insights, creative solutions, clear decisions — do not emerge from fragmented attention.

They emerge from depth.

And depth requires focus.

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Clifford Nass later admitted his surprise.

“We were absolutely shocked. We all lost our bets. It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking.”

Not slightly worse.

Significantly worse.

Heavy multitaskers performed poorly at filtering irrelevant information. They struggled more when switching between tasks. Their working memory was weaker. Their focus fractured more easily.

The one small exception? Music.

As Nass explained, music is processed in specialized regions of the brain. For many people, it does not compete directly with executive cognitive function. Background music can coexist with focused work.

But email, messaging apps, notifications, calls, and browser tabs?
Those compete aggressively for the same mental bandwidth.

And bandwidth is finite.

When the brain attempts to juggle multiple demanding tasks — or rapidly alternate between them — error rates climb sharply. Completion time often doubles. Sometimes worse.

Why?

Because every switch forces the brain to reset.

Attention disengages.
Context is lost.
Focus must be rebuilt.

Researchers Meyer and Kieras demonstrated that during these switching intervals, the brain makes no forward progress on either task. It is in cognitive neutral.

So multitaskers do not simply perform tasks less effectively.

They lose time in the gaps.

For a startup founder, this is not academic theory. It is survival strategy.

When you are building something fragile — when cash-flow matters, when momentum matters, when precision matters — doubling your task time and increasing your error rate is not a small inefficiency. It is a liability.

The solution is simple, though not easy:

Task awareness.
Task discipline.
One task at a time.

This becomes even more important in a single-person company.

Startups can be lonely. Isolation can creep in. A notification feels like connection. A ringing phone feels like activity. A new message feels like validation.

Sometimes we welcome the interruption.

That is precisely why discipline is required.

Do not drop meaningful work to answer every ping.
Do not surrender deep focus for shallow stimulation.

Silence notifications.
Return calls at scheduled times.
Batch communication.

Guard your attention as fiercely as you guard your cash.

Because for a founder, attention is capital.

And every unnecessary switch is a withdrawal.

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This level of self-discipline does not come naturally.

It must be trained.

And for the single-person business owner, it is not optional — it is essential.

Modern work culture pulls us in the opposite direction. Notifications, messaging platforms, collaborative tools, and instant replies have created an environment where constant responsiveness is mistaken for productivity.

But constant responsiveness destroys depth.

A widely discussed workplace analysis put it bluntly: the endless ping of messages that keeps us connected may be doing more harm than good. We feel compelled to reply — it’s work, after all. But when we are always “on,” we never enter the mental state required for deep thinking.

And deep thinking is where value is created.

Cal Newport, author of Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, has argued that in knowledge-based work — where ideas, strategy, design, and innovation drive results — focus is becoming more valuable than raw skill.

The future will reward those who can concentrate.

In a world where everyone is distracted, focus becomes a competitive advantage.

Knowledge work depends on the human brain’s ability to produce insight. But when we fragment our attention, we lower the return on our most important asset — our thinking.

Many people still swear by multitasking. It feels efficient. It feels dynamic. It feels modern.

But research consistently shows that heavy multitaskers underperform across cognitive tasks. Our brains have limited processing capacity. Trying to cram more into each hour does not expand that capacity — it strains it.

And there is a psychological cost.

Being expected to respond immediately creates low-grade anxiety. It keeps social circuits in the brain on alert. Even when we try to focus, part of us is aware that someone might be waiting for a reply.

That subtle tension erodes clarity.

Because it is so easy to send a quick message, expectations have expanded. The average knowledge worker today is responsible for more simultaneous tasks than ever before. The result is frenetic motion — activity without depth.

For founders, this pattern is especially dangerous.

You are not managing an inbox.
You are building a company.

If your day is filled with reactive communication, you are not designing strategy, refining product, or solving meaningful problems. You are simply maintaining noise.

Newport describes modern work as a “hyperactive hive-mind” — endless unstructured conversations, spontaneous meetings, fragmented communication streams.

This way of operating leads to one inevitable outcome:

Burnout.

Context switching drains cognitive energy. Each interruption leaves behind what researchers call attention residue — part of your mind remains stuck on the previous task even as you attempt to move to the next.

You are never fully here.
You are never fully there.

Linear workflows — finishing one meaningful block of work before transitioning to another — align with how the brain actually operates.

But this requires courage.

It requires turning off notifications.
It requires setting boundaries.
It requires slower communication.
It requires resisting the dopamine hit of constant interaction.

As a founder, you must fight for concentration.

Schedule communication windows.
Batch responses.
Protect uninterrupted blocks of deep work.

Do less — but do it better.

Because startups are not built by the busiest person in the room.

They are built by the person who can think clearly for long enough to solve the right problems.

And in the end, that ability — to focus deeply in a distracted world — may be your greatest unfair advantage.

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Annoyingly, the busier we feel, the more we switch.

Perceived urgency drives fragmentation. We bounce between emails, calls, documents, messages — convincing ourselves that activity equals progress.

It doesn’t.

Studies estimating recovery time after interruption vary, but at the high end, research suggests it can take an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain deep focus after a distraction.

Twenty-three minutes.

If you are interrupted four or five times in a morning, your ability to enter meaningful concentration may disappear entirely.

The irony? Constant communication is convenient. It feels collaborative. It feels modern.

But convenience is not the objective in business.

Value is.

The assembly line was not designed for convenience. It was designed for output. It revolutionized manufacturing not because it felt natural, but because it produced results efficiently.

Workplaces — and especially startups — should take note.

In sectors like software engineering, focus-driven workflows already exist. Agile methods. Scrum cycles. Sprint-based execution. Teams work intensely on one clearly defined objective for a fixed period. During that time, that objective is the priority.

No ad hoc chaos.
No endless side conversations.
No scattered attention.

Just concentrated effort.

This structure aligns far more closely with how the brain actually functions.

The industrial analogy is instructive.

Before the production line, skilled workers crafted products from beginning to end. That system was personal. It was convenient. It was flexible.

It was also slow.

It took decades of experimentation to discover that specialization and sequential focus produced superior output. Short, intense bursts of highly focused work — then handoff — outperformed scattered effort.

Why should knowledge work be any different?

We have only had a few decades of digital communication shaping how we work. It is naïve to assume we have already found the optimal structure.

As a founder, you can implement your own “production line.”

If you are building a pitch deck, run it as a sprint.
If you are developing a new product feature, block dedicated time.
If you are mapping strategy, isolate yourself until the thinking is complete.

Gather only the essential people. Define the outcome clearly. Eliminate distractions. Finish the task before moving on.

Focus is not slow.

Fragmentation is slow.

We may still be in what Newport calls the early, unrefined phase of knowledge work — mistaking constant interaction for productivity. But the founders who learn to structure their days around depth rather than noise will outpace those who remain perpetually reactive.

Right now, many companies reward visible busyness.

The next generation of successful companies will reward visible output.

And output — meaningful, strategic, creative output — comes from sustained concentration.

As a single-person business owner, you do not need to wait for the world to change.

You can start today.

Protect blocks of time.
Work in sprints.
Finish what you start.

Because the founders who master focus will not just feel productive.

They will be.

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Resources

This video resource is not about multi-tasking…well…not specifically.

Here we have two wonderful serial-entrepreneur guests join the VLS-E to discuss the art of pitching to investors, along with  many other topics. This video is full of golden nuggets.