How to Stop Multitasking (and Finish One Thing at a Time)

By Antonio Neves

To stop multitasking, decide the one thing that will make today a success before you open anything, give it a block of time with an end time, and close everything that isn't that one thing. Batch the small stuff, like email and messages, into a few set check times. And when something does pull you away, write one line about where you left off so your head can actually let go. Every switch between tasks costs you time, and the cost goes up the harder the task is.

You know the scene. Fourteen tabs open. A half written proposal in one window, the inbox in another, a chat ping every few minutes. You answer "on it" in the middle of a sentence, go back to the proposal and read the same paragraph three times trying to remember where you were going with it. By 4:00 you've touched everything and finished nothing.

It feels like you're getting a lot done, because you're moving the whole time. The research says otherwise.

In a 2001 study, Joshua Rubinstein, Jeffrey Evans and David Meyer had people switch between tasks and measured what it cost. People lost time on every switch, and the losses got bigger when the tasks were more complex or less familiar. In the American Psychological Association's write up of this research, Meyer says even brief mental blocks from shifting between tasks "can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time."

Then there's what happens after you switch. Sophie Leroy, a business school professor, published a study in 2009 with a title that pretty much says it all: "Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work?" She found that when people moved from one task to the next, part of their attention stayed stuck on the first one. She called it attention residue. People with more of it did worse on the next task. The people who finished the first task under a deadline let go of it more easily.

So what feels like doing two things at once is really switching back and forth, paying a little every time, and carrying pieces of the last thing into the next one.

My son is nine the first time he sits up front in the car instead of in the back next to his twin sister. And I see him as a person, not just my kid. So I tell him, "In the backseat, you always get Dad. But up here, you're gonna get some Tony too."

He asks if he can play his music. I say nope and play mine.

That's one thing at a time when the thing is a person. At your desk the thing is a proposal or a spreadsheet. Same idea.

The 1-Day Method came out of a different moment. After my family lost our home in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, each morning I asked one question: What will make today a success? Not the year, not the month, not the week. Just this day. That same question is step 1 here. It decides what the one thing is before the inbox does.

Want this on paper? The free 1-Day Method Starter Kit has the morning question, your 3 priorities, the daily acts and end of day wins. Print it and write tomorrow's one thing on it before you open a single tab.

Before email, before chat, before the tabs, write down your answer to "What will make today a success?" Make it something you could check off by tonight, like "Send the proposal to Dana" instead of "work on the proposal."

Then pick your 3 priorities, the Essential 3. When nothing's decided, everything feels equally urgent, and that's when you start bouncing between tabs. When the answer is on paper, you know which tab matters and which ones are just open. If you want the longer version of picking three, I wrote a whole post on the rule of 3 for productivity.

Pick the first priority and give it a block on your calendar with a start time and an end time. Forty five minutes, ninety, whatever you can protect. During that block, it's the only thing open.

Close the inbox. Close the chat app or set it to do not disturb. Put the phone in a drawer or another room. Close every tab that isn't the work. This can feel extreme. Do it for one block today and see what happens.

Some interruptions are real. Your manager calls, a client needs an answer, something breaks. When that happens, take 20 seconds before you switch and write one line: where you are and what the next move is. "Halfway through the pricing section, next is the second option."

Sophie Leroy and Theresa Glomb tested this in 2018. A quick "ready to resume" plan written at the moment of the interruption cut down the attention residue people carried into the next task. The same idea is at the center of how to reset your day, for when the whole morning falls apart.

Email and messages are an easy multitasking trap, because each one only takes a minute. Then you look up and it's been an hour of minutes.

Pick two or three times a day to check, like 11:30, 2:00 and 4:30, and leave it closed in between. Kostadin Kushlev and Elizabeth Dunn at the University of British Columbia had 124 adults check email just three times a day for one week and as often as they wanted for another. People felt less stressed during the three times a day week. Most of them also found it hard to stick to, so start with one protected block in the morning if three checks sounds impossible. For the morning part, here's how to stop checking email first thing in the morning.

Remember Leroy's finding: people who finished the first task under a deadline let go of it more easily. The end time on your block is that deadline. Aim to finish one real piece of the work before the block ends, even if it's small. Send the draft. Close the loop. Then move.

When the block ends and the thing is done, write it down as a win. And if it isn't done, write the ready to resume line from step 3 and move on anyway.

Some jobs don't come with 90 quiet minutes. Support, front desk, operations, managing a team, anything where answering people fast is the work. If that's you, the steps still apply. They just get smaller.

Shrink the block to 20 or 25 minutes. Tell the people around you when you'll be heads down and when you'll check back, so they know when to expect you. Keep a running ready to resume line at the top of whatever you're working on. And when a new request comes in, ask one question before you jump: does this change today's answer? If it doesn't, it goes on the list for your next check time. If it does, switch on purpose, write the line, and go.

If you're also in meetings all day, here's how to refocus after back to back meetings.

Yes. Walking while you're on a phone call, folding laundry with a podcast on, stretching while you wait for a file to download. When one of the two things runs on autopilot, there's not much to switch between.

The trouble starts when both things need your thinking. Writing an email during a meeting. Reading a report while you listen to someone explain a different report. That's where the switching costs from the research show up.

For tasks that both need your thinking, yes. In research by Joshua Rubinstein, Jeffrey Evans and David Meyer, people lost time every time they switched between tasks, and the losses grew with how complex the tasks were. Meyer has said brief mental blocks from switching can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time.

Attention residue is the part of your attention that stays on the last task after you switch to a new one. Sophie Leroy named it in a 2009 study and found that people with more of it did worse on the next task. Writing a quick ready to resume line before you switch helps reduce it.

Make the blocks smaller instead of skipping them. Work in 20 or 25 minute blocks, tell people when you'll check messages, keep one line at the top of your work that says where you left off, and ask whether each new request changes what will make today a success before you jump to it.

Yes, when one of the tasks runs on autopilot, like walking during a phone call or folding laundry with a podcast on. The cost shows up when both tasks need your thinking, like writing an email during a meeting.

Decide the one thing that will make today a success before you open email or chat. Write it down, give it a block with an end time, and close everything else during that block.

The 1-Day Method Planner is the paper version of the question I asked every morning after the fire. Each day has room for your answer to "What will make today a success?", your Essential 3, up to five focused tasks, the Top 5 and your wins. That's steps 1 and 2 of this post on one page: the answer decides the one thing, and the focused tasks give everything else a place to wait while you work. Finish is one of the Top 5, so step 5 shows up there every morning too. It's undated, it covers 90 days, it takes under 5 minutes a day, and it's $29.99.

If you want the whole method behind it, The 1-Day Method book is short on purpose. It walks through the question, the Essential 3 and the Top 5.

Not ready to buy anything? Grab the free Starter Kit and write tomorrow's first block on it tonight: one task, one end time.

Antonio Neves is an author, keynote speaker, and former journalist for NBC, PBS, and MTV Networks. He's delivered more than 400 keynotes for companies like Google, McDonald's, and Visa. After his family lost their home in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, he created The 1-Day Method to rebuild his life one day at a time.