Task switching isn't multitasking: how to change tasks without the fog
Rich Diviney and Huberman agree that the brain switches between tasks rather than doing them at once, and that each switch has a cost. Transition gaps and deliberate workspace changes make those switches cleaner and cut the mental fog.
The Short Version
Your brain does not run two demanding tasks at once. What feels like multitasking is rapid switching, and every switch costs energy, attention and time before you are fully engaged again [1][2]. Former Navy SEAL officer Rich Diviney puts it bluntly: most "multitasking" is just rapid task switching, which breaks flow, and every phone notification costs attention [1]. Andrew Huberman explains why: the brain has to turn up one set of circuits and let another quiet down, so even a planned switch takes about five to ten minutes before you feel focused [2][3]. The fix both men point to is fewer, cleaner switches: protect deep work zones [1], give yourself a short, labeled transition gap with no phone or new information between tasks [2], and use your physical workspace and changes of location on purpose to put your brain into the right state for the next task [3].
Table of contents
What They Said
Rich Diviney: multitasking is a myth, and switching has a price
Rich Diviney spent more than 20 years in elite military service and built a framework of 25 core "attributes" that he treats as trainable capacities rather than fixed traits [1]. Task switching comes up as one of the practical lessons in that framework, and his position is simple and firm. Your brain can't focus on two things simultaneously, he says, and most of what people call "multitasking" is really rapid task switching, which costs energy and breaks flow [1].
He makes the cost concrete in two ways. First, every phone notification costs attention: a buzz is not a free glance but a small switch in its own right [1]. Second, the recovery is long. By his account, shifting focus takes 15 to 20 minutes to recover [1]. His answer follows from that: reduce unnecessary switches and protect deep work zones [1].
Diviney's broader thinking explains why he cares. He separates peak performance, which he calls temporary, from optimal performance, the more sustainable habit of doing your best with the resources you have at any moment [1]. In his words, "Peak is sexy. But it's unsustainable. Optimal is when you show up and do your best in chaos, exhaustion, or fear." [1] Seen that way, constant switching is a steady drain on the resources you would otherwise bring to the work in front of you. He also stresses structure over willpower: he admits he lacks strong self-discipline but has high discipline, and he uses a reward system to chunk progress, saying "I reward progress, not perfection. Cheat days help. So do milestones. Motivation needs structure." [1] Protecting deep work zones is that same idea applied to attention: you build the structure so you don't have to rely on resisting every interruption as it comes.
The source gives only this short outline of his view on switching; it does not include his reasoning about brain mechanisms or a step-by-step method beyond cutting switches and guarding focused time [1].
Andrew Huberman: switching is a biological process that takes time
In an Ask Me Anything episode devoted to one listener question, whether you can get better at task switching, Huberman gives the most detailed account of the three sources [2]. He starts by admitting he struggles with it himself: "I've always had a pretty good ability to drop into deep focus." [2] The trouble, he says, is getting out again, which is one reason he sometimes runs late, so he has had to find and use tools for switching [2].
Task switching is not the same as cognitive flexibility
Huberman first separates task switching from cognitive flexibility, which people often confuse [2]. The prefrontal cortex, which he describes as a large and varied region with many subdivisions rather than one area, lets us direct focus and thinking in a context-dependent way [2]. He uses high school as an example: math, history and social studies each demanded different kinds of thinking, all shared some rules (sit in your chair), and each teacher added their own, with one letting you put your feet up and another forbidding it [2]. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to change the type of mental operation you perform depending on what you're trying to learn or do. Task switching needs cognitive flexibility, but it is a separate thing [2].
In the lab, he explains, task switching studies usually have people do one type of operation and then switch at a signal or at set intervals, "maybe every 10 minutes or so to switch their attention and to do a different task entirely." [2] A typical cognitive version is counting upward "In increments of say seven, or increments of seven plus one, then seven minus one," and then, when "a tone is played, or they'll get a signal from the experimenter," switching to a different cognitive task [2]. A typical physical version is "placement of puzzle pieces into the correct configuration," followed by a switch to a different manual task [2]. He notes that "fewer, not zero, but fewer experiments have examined task switching between physical and cognitive tasks." [2] The extreme real-world case is chess boxing, where competitors alternate between rounds of chess and rounds of boxing, which he stresses he is not recommending: "Again, I'm not suggesting people chess box, but I know that many people have challenges with task switching." [2]
Expect a ramp-up, and stop blaming yourself
His first point is about expectations. Many people believe that when they sit down to read, they should be focused immediately [2]. Unless you are "absolutely enthralled from the first word or you are intensely curious" about the material, it typically takes about five to ten minutes before the circuits needed to understand and remember it come online enough for you to feel focused [2]. He puts it plainly: "I think a lot of people have placed an undue burden on themselves." [2]
The reason is that brain activity is always a push-pull: switching tasks means increasing activity in some circuits while others are inhibited or simply quiet down, like dimming the lights in one room while brightening another [2]. He contrasts this with moments when attention is instant, like waiting for the "dot dot dot" of a text you're eager to read, or trying to find someone in a big city when you need to know exactly where to meet [2]. When you start a book, a spreadsheet, your taxes or even a conversation, expect a transition [2]. He believes many people wrongly conclude they have attention problems, while acknowledging that some people do have clinically diagnosable ADHD, which he can't rule out [2].
The same applies to the body. Expecting peak performance on a run or in the gym without any warm-up, or without letting go of the conversation you had on the way in, is unfair to yourself and doesn't match how neural circuits work [2]. His summary for anyone starting the day: "please expect, do expect a period in which it's hard to get into the groove, so to speak." [2]
Designate a transition period
His second tool is the heart of this Insight. He calls it underdiscussed: "This is something that in my opinion has not been discussed enough." [2] He says introducing short transition gaps between activities is "nicely supported, both at the mechanistic level and at the practical level within the published literature." [2]
Going straight from task A to task B makes it harder to fully engage in task B [2]. What he finds remarkable is how little it takes to help: "even the introduction of an arbitrary but very short transition period of say 15 seconds where you know that you're introducing 15 seconds of transition and you designated as transition will allow you to engage in a more efficient and more complete level of task execution on task B." [2] That, he says, shows "there are top down influences," things we can tell ourselves, based on understanding the mechanism, that help us switch better, and it "certainly doesn't involve taking any kind of prescription drug or supplement." [2]
During the gap you are not trying to do task B. He describes the inner stance: "I'm not trying to focus on the next thing that I need to do I might focus on it inadvertently but I'm not deliberately trying to focus on it." [2] Instead you think about what you just did and the fact that you are no longer doing it, "kind of leaving it like a fog behind." [2] You are "not placing this unfair expectation on your neural circuits to just flip to task B," you are acknowledging that task B will take five to ten minutes to drop into fully, and "you're going to shorten that five to ten minutes by deliberately introducing a transition period." [2]
How long should the gap be? He says it "is going to scale directly with how long you were in a deep trench of focus for task A." [2] After something light, such as email, talking to a co-worker or a routine meeting, a couple of minutes is enough; after a deep trench of focus, give yourself longer, maybe five to ten minutes [2]. The situations he lists are everyday ones: heading back to your desk, heading to your next class, going to work after a morning workout, or leaving work to engage with family when "you need to dump the stuff that you were just doing cognitively and you now need to do a bunch of other things." [2] If time is short, even 60 to 90 seconds helps, or just ten seconds of counting: "I just need like 10 seconds. I'm going to recognize, I'm going to count down 10 to 1 or 1 up to 10. Doesn't matter. This is transition time." [2]
He grounds this in his own history. As a new assistant professor trying to write grants, he would get two lines down before someone knocked to ask where the syringes or buffer were kept, which constantly pulled him between tasks [2].
Don't sneak in a third task
What fills the gap matters as much as its length. The key is a relative lack of attention to anything new: "You're not foraging for anything in fact you're trying to limit the total amount of information that you're bringing into your nervous system." [2] He is realistic about this: you don't have to walk around with your eyes closed, and you "can't shut down your brain while awake." [2] The point is that "you're ensuring that you're not going from task a to task B to task C." [2]
The phone is the main hazard, and he names the trap directly: "you might think that looking at your phone is not a task right it's so easy for you to see that you're not it so reflexive." [2] Scrolling is itself a demanding task, because pictures and videos are powerful stimuli that anchor attention and plant new thoughts that will intrude on task B [2]. His rule for the gap: "this is not a time to look at my phone or to be in lots of different time domains." [2] He stresses that he isn't anti-smartphone; he uses his phones constantly between bouts of focus, including for texting and social media work [2]. His first answer to anyone asking how to switch better is simply: please don't introduce yet more tasks [2].
That doesn't mean treating the world as a threat. You can chat with a colleague walking back from a meeting or glance at the horizon on the way to your desk: "It doesn't anchor to things that just happen to be in your environment unless they're a particular interest." [2] But after years in busy labs, he learned that getting good at your craft means not being drawn into everything going on around you, such as a crowd around a computer watching the World Cup, and moving from task A to task B in a dedicated way [2].
Limit demanding work to three tasks a day
As a master's student at Berkeley, Huberman picked up a habit from an accomplished professor who wrote down three things to accomplish each day, never more [2]. Routine activities like biking to campus, running and the gym didn't count [2]. Huberman has used the method for years: one, two or at most three tasks that need real cognitive focus, with everything else treated as the automatic parts of his day [2]. Those tasks may still take many hours each, but limiting them helps with both task switching and getting things done consistently [2]. Fewer demanding tasks means fewer hard switches.
A near-far visual exercise to practice switching
His last tool is, he emphasizes, not meditation but a visual perceptual exercise, based on the link between where we focus our eyes and how the brain parses time [2]. Focusing close to the body or on bodily sensations makes the brain slice time more finely, like the high frame rate that produces slow-motion video, while looking far away slices it more coarsely [2]. Different tasks, like a Zoom meeting, reading, lifting weights or walking the dog, engage circuits working in different time domains, so part of switching tasks is shifting into the right time domain [2].
He does it almost every morning, ideally outdoors or at a window with a distant view, in two to three minutes: eyes closed on bodily sensations for 5 to 15 seconds; eyes open on your hand for 5 to 15 seconds; something 5 to 10 feet away for 5 to 15 seconds; farther out, perhaps 50 feet, then as far toward the horizon as you can while noticing your breathing; then eyes closed and back to your surroundings and breath [2]. The distances don't need to be precise [2]. He says of it, "you don't even need to do it every day," and "Even if you were to do this perceptual practice once a week or three times a week, I'm certain that you'll benefit." [2] The value is that you "start to see and feel, literally see and feel the way that that transition occurs and that it takes a little bit of time." [2] He calls it "very safe, zero cost," though "please don't do it while driving or while operating in any other machinery." [2]
Huberman on the workspace: the room itself can help you switch
In a separate solo episode on workspace design, Huberman says the goal includes "to improve your ability to task switch," and he shifts the focus from dopamine, caffeine and supplements to "how we arrange our physical environment and indeed how we arrange ourselves in that physical environment in order to bring out the best in our neurobiology." [3] Several parts of that episode bear directly on cleaner switches.
The same ramp-up, measured another way
Here he gives slightly different numbers for the same idea. "Even at our most heightened levels of focus, most people can only maintain focus before switching tasks for about three minutes, which is depressingly short period of time." [3] He adds that you can extend that period [3]. And when you start any work bout, "expect that it would take about six minutes for you to engage these neural circuits." [3] He uses the gym comparison again: you wouldn't walk in and attempt a personal record without warming up, "And yet we sort of expect that our brain should be able to lock on and do work in a very focused way immediately." [3] Distraction blockers such as the free app Freedom, or simply turning off your phone, shorten that ramp-up [3]. Elsewhere in the episode he repeats the core principle: "Neural circuits, again, take time to engage. The only neural circuits that are going to engage instantly are going to do the ones that are of a sort of reflexive sort." [3]
Interruptions are forced switches
Admitting there is little formal science here, Huberman says "Interruptions really are deadly to our ability to generate focus", partly because of the minutes lost and partly because of the extra time to re-engage focus circuits [3]. This is Diviney's point about notifications from a different angle: an interruption is a switch you didn't choose [1][3].
His examples are practical. His graduate advisor kept her computer facing the wall, perpendicular to the door; when someone came by she would acknowledge them but never turn her body toward them, which kept conversations short, and longer discussions happened in scheduled face-to-face meetings [3]. He warns that facing your computer toward the door is bad for focus [3]. Other colleagues simply said no through the door to every request, which worked even if it wasn't always kind [3]. One extremely productive former podcast guest works in cleared-out coat closets with just a desk lamp and no windows, and moves between several of them to avoid being found [3].
For digital interruptions he suggests Freedom, turning off Wi-Fi when you don't need it, airplane mode, locking your phone in a safe or leaving it in the car [3]. A highly productive graduate student in his lab put her phone in a drawer each morning and took it out only when she left, which he thinks was no coincidence [3]. He himself tries to keep large blocks of the day, such as every other hour or two to three hours at a time, phone-free [3].
Breaks that don't become a new task
The workspace episode also has a break rule that mirrors the transition-gap advice. For every 45 minutes of close-up focus on a screen, book or phone, spend at least five minutes in panoramic vision, ideally walking outside and looking at the horizon, and above all don't spend the break checking your phone, which keeps you in the same narrow focus [3]. He links neglecting this to eye fatigue, headaches, migraines and neck pain [3]. It is the same logic as the transition gap in [2]: the pause only works if you don't fill it with more input.
Match the room to the task
Much of the episode is about putting your brain in the right state for the kind of work you're switching into. Keeping your work within a narrow visual window, roughly what you'd see with your hands cupped beside your eyes like a horse's blinders, heightens alertness, because "your brain follows your vision in terms of focus." [3] Raising your screen to at least nose level engages alertness circuits, while looking down activates circuits linked to calm and sleepiness [3]. Standing activates locus coeruleus neurons more than sitting, and walking activates them more still [3].
Ceiling height matters too. Citing a paper by Joan Meyers-Levy and Rui (Juliet) Zhu, he says even the difference between an 8-foot and a 10-foot ceiling shifted how people processed information: high ceilings primed abstract, creative thinking, and low ceilings primed the detailed, analytic kind [3]. His advice is to do creative brainstorming in a high-ceilinged room or outdoors, and detailed work with a correct answer in a lower-ceilinged space; without a choice of rooms, a brimmed hat or hoodie lowers your visual ceiling and taking it off raises it [3]. Lighting follows the day as well: bright overhead light early for analytic work, dimmer and warmer light later for creative work [3]. So a switch from analytic to creative work can be a switch of setting too, not just a switch in your head.
Changing location as a deliberate switch
He ends the episode with a story from multi-day scientific conferences. The few people who stayed engaged through long days of talks moved to a different seat after each session; one colleague told him that sitting in one place with one visual angle made his mind drift within a talk or two [3]. Huberman's explanation is that "our visual system drives our thinking", so novel visual environments boost alertness [3]. That's why moving between home, office, cafe and outdoors, even within one day, can raise productivity, as long as the new setting isn't so novel or loud that it pulls attention away from the work [3].
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Where They Agree, and Where They Don't
Agreement
Both sources reject the idea that the brain does two demanding things at once. Diviney says your brain can't focus on two things simultaneously and that "multitasking" is really rapid switching [1]. Huberman's whole treatment rests on the same model: the brain must turn one set of circuits down and another up, so tasks follow one another rather than running in parallel [2][3].
Both agree that each switch has a cost. For Diviney, switching costs energy and breaks flow, and recovery takes a long time [1]. For Huberman, the cost is the ramp-up before new circuits engage and the difficulty of fully entering task B straight after task A [2][3].
Both single out the phone. Diviney says every phone notification costs attention [1]. Huberman says looking at your phone during a transition quietly adds a third task, and in his workspace episode recommends drawers, safes, airplane mode and phone-free blocks [2][3].
Both favor protecting focused time. Diviney's solution is to reduce unnecessary switches and protect deep work zones [1]. Huberman's versions are a limit of three demanding tasks a day, fewer interruptions, and large phone-free blocks [2][3].
Where they differ
The clearest difference is the size of the cost. Diviney says shifting focus takes 15 to 20 minutes to recover [1]. Huberman gives smaller numbers: about five to ten minutes to feel focused on a new task [2], or about six minutes to engage focus circuits at the start of a work bout [3]. The sources don't explain the gap, and they aren't measuring quite the same thing. Diviney's figure is framed as recovery after focus has been broken, as by a notification in the middle of deep work [1]. Huberman's figures are about warming up into a new, planned task, and he adds that a deliberate transition period can shorten that ramp-up [2]. It's reasonable to read the two as describing different situations, an unplanned break versus a chosen switch, but neither source makes that comparison itself.
Huberman also adds a number that sits oddly next to the others: most people, even at their most focused, can only maintain focus for about three minutes before switching tasks [3]. That's a statement about how quickly attention drifts, not about how long a switch takes, and he says the period can be extended [3].
The second difference is emphasis. Diviney's advice, as the summary gives it, is mostly about avoidance: cut the switches you don't need [1]. Huberman accepts that some switches are unavoidable, between work and family, a meeting and a desk, a workout and the office, and focuses on doing them well: expect the ramp-up, label a gap, keep it clean, and practice switching [2]. The two positions fit together: reduce the switches you can, and handle the rest deliberately.
One caveat on the evidence. Huberman describes the transition-gap finding as supported in the published literature [2], but the sources don't name the specific studies. In the workspace episode, he admits there is little formal science on managing interruptions and offers mostly anecdotes [3]. The conference-seat habit is also an anecdote [3].
Why It Works
Circuits have to wind down as well as up
Huberman's core mechanism is the push-pull of brain activity. Switching means increasing activity in some circuits while others are inhibited or quiet down, like dimming the lights in one room while brightening another [2]. As he puts it, "the brain is going to be required to shift over the neural circuits that are active and less active in order to do that." [2] That takes time, which is why a new task needs a five- to ten-minute ramp-up [2] and why, in his words, "there's always a transition period when task switching, but here you're taking conscious control over that transition period." [2] The fog people feel after a switch is the old task's circuits still running while the new ones haven't caught up. His image for the gap, "leaving it like a fog behind," describes letting that residue fade on purpose [2].
Labeling the pause is a top-down effect
The striking part of the transition-gap finding is that an arbitrary 15-second pause helps, as long as you know you're taking it and call it transition [2]. Huberman reads this as evidence of "top down influences": understanding what's happening lets you change how well it happens, without drugs or supplements [2]. The labeled pause stops you from placing an "unfair expectation" on your circuits to flip instantly, and it shortens the ramp-up into task B [2].
New input creates a hidden extra switch
The gap only works if it stays empty of new demands. Pictures and videos are powerful stimuli that anchor attention and plant new thoughts that intrude on the next task, so scrolling during a gap turns one switch into two [2]. Background things that aren't of particular interest, such as the horizon on a walk back to your desk, don't anchor attention the same way [2]. This matches Diviney's point that every notification costs attention [1] and Huberman's point that interruptions add the time needed to re-engage focus circuits [3].
Vision sets both alertness and time
Two visual mechanisms support the workspace side of the argument. First, the brain follows vision: converging the eyes on a narrow target raises alertness and cognition, which is why a narrow work window helps focus [3]. Where your eyes point also feeds brainstem arousal: looking up engages alertness circuits and looking down favors calm [3]. Second, where you focus visually changes how finely the brain slices time: close-in focus slices time finely, distant focus slices it coarsely, and different tasks run in different time domains [2]. Practicing near-far shifts trains the brain to move between those domains, and lets you notice that transitions take a little time [2].
Novel settings raise alertness
Because "our visual system drives our thinking", a new visual environment boosts alertness [3]. Changing seats, rooms or locations therefore works as a physical reset, as long as the new place isn't so novel or noisy that it pulls you away from the work [3]. Ceiling height and lighting add another layer, priming more abstract or more detailed thinking depending on the space [3], so a change of room can help you arrive in the right mode for the next task.
Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't
It applies to demanding cognitive work. Huberman's three-task rule separates tasks that need real cognitive focus from routine activities you already know how to do, like biking to campus or going to the gym [2]. The switching costs matter most between the demanding ones.
It applies to physical tasks too. Expecting peak performance in a run or a gym session without a warm-up, or without letting go of the conversation you had on the way in, runs into the same limits [2]. Lab research also covers switching between manual tasks, though fewer studies have looked at switching between physical and cognitive ones [2].
It applies to life transitions, not just work. Huberman explicitly includes going from a workout to work and from work to family as switches that need a gap [2].
The gap length should fit the task. After light work like email or a routine meeting, a couple of minutes is enough; after deep focus, five to ten minutes; when you have almost no time, ten seconds of counting still helps [2].
It doesn't mean shutting out the world. You can't shut down your brain while awake, and you don't need to walk around with your eyes closed; a chat with a colleague or a look at the horizon on the way back to your desk is fine [2]. The rule is against deliberately taking in new, engaging information, not against being in the world.
Instant attention is an exception, not a failure. When something is urgent or thrilling, like the "dot dot dot" of a text you're eager to read, attention locks on at once [2]. Huberman also notes that instant focus is realistic only when you are stressed or excited [3]. Most tasks aren't like that, and you shouldn't expect them to be.
A slow start isn't necessarily an attention disorder. Many people wrongly conclude they have attention problems, Huberman says, but some people do have clinically diagnosable ADHD, which he can't rule out [2]. If trouble focusing or switching is persistent and affects your life, see a doctor or qualified clinician rather than relying on these habits alone.
Changing location has limits. A new setting helps only if it isn't so novel or loud that it pulls attention away from the work [3]. And the right room depends on the task: high ceilings and open spaces for creative work, lower ceilings and a narrow visual field for detailed, analytic work [3].
The visual exercise isn't for everywhere. Huberman calls it safe and zero cost but warns against doing it while driving or operating machinery [2]. He also says it's not meditation, and it isn't a substitute for the transition gap itself [2].
The evidence is uneven. The transition-gap advice is described as supported by the literature [2]; the interruption tactics and the conference-seat habit rest on anecdote [3]. And the sources give different sizes for the cost of a switch, from about six minutes [3] to five to ten [2] to 15 to 20 for recovery after focus is broken [1].
What To Do With It
Stop trying to multitask demanding work. Accept that your brain handles one demanding task at a time and that "multitasking" is really rapid switching with a cost each time [1][2]. Plan for sequences, not parallel work.
Cut the switches you don't need. Protect deep work zones [1]. Put your phone in a drawer, a safe, the car or airplane mode, turn off Wi-Fi when you don't need it, or use a blocker like Freedom [3]. Try keeping blocks of two to three hours, or every other hour, phone-free, as Huberman does [3].
Cap your demanding tasks at three a day. Write down one, two or at most three tasks that need real focus, and treat routine activities as the automatic parts of your day [2].
Expect a warm-up and don't judge it. Give any new task about five to ten minutes to come online, or about six minutes at the start of a work bout [2][3]. Don't read a slow start as a personal failing [2].
Label a transition gap between tasks. When task A ends, say to yourself that this is transition time. Take a couple of minutes after light work, five to ten after deep focus, and at least ten seconds of counting when you're rushed [2]. Think about what you just finished and let it fade behind you; don't start task B yet [2].
Keep the gap empty of new information. No phone, texting, social media or information foraging during the transition, so you don't add a hidden third task [2]. A walk, a chat on the way back from a meeting or a look at the horizon is fine [2].
Use the 45-to-5 rule for longer stretches. For every 45 minutes of close-up work, spend at least five minutes in panoramic vision, ideally outside looking at the horizon, and not on your phone [3].
Arrange your space to limit interruptions. Don't face your computer toward the door [3]. If people drop by, acknowledge them without turning your body toward them, and move longer conversations into scheduled meetings, as Huberman's advisor did [3].
Change the setting to match the next task. For detailed, analytic work, use a lower ceiling or a brimmed hat, a narrow visual window and a screen at or above nose level; for creative work, move to a high-ceilinged room or outdoors and let the lighting get warmer and dimmer later in the day [3]. When your mind starts to drift, change seats or locations, as long as the new spot isn't so loud or novel that it steals your attention [3].
Practice switching with the near-far exercise. A few mornings a week, spend two to three minutes moving your attention from your body to your hand, then 5 to 10 feet away, then about 50 feet, then the horizon, then back to your breath [2]. Do it at a window or outdoors, and never while driving or operating machinery [2].