Is Multichannel Multitasking Good for Productivity?

In the quest for greater productivity, a new trend has emerged: multichannel multitasking. This method suggests combining activities that use different sensory channels—for example, listening to a podcast while working or taking a work call while walking. The idea is that by dividing tasks across separate senses, you can fully optimize your abilities without overload.

Sounds great in theory, right? But is it?

Why Multichannel Multitasking Is a Myth

When you think about a lemon, you don't just think about its color or shape. You probably immediately scrunch up your face. You can actually taste it, smell it, and even imagine the sound it makes when it's cut or its rough skin.

You may also automatically recall many connected details, like the time you tried to eat a slice of lemon or a particular summer when you had the best lemonade, the glass, the people who were with you, how hot it was, everything your life related to the idea of a lemon.

This happens because our senses always work together when making sense of reality.

We don't experience the world through isolated senses. Instead, our brain combines inputs from sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell to create a rich and connected experience. This ability to perceive through combinations of senses allows us to form richer concepts.

A big misunderstanding is that we assume one sense is predominantly at work for certain activities. For example, we think reading is just about using our eyes. However, this is an illusion. Behind the scenes, all our senses contribute significantly to the experience. When we read, our brain may need to "hear" the words, picture the images and the meaning, and create an internal narrative that involves more than just sight.

This natural multisensory integration makes our understanding deeper, richer, and more connected.

By multitasking across sensory channels, we reduce the richness of our experiences and limit our brain's ability to form meaningful connections.

The Costs of Multichannel Multitasking

The idea of multichannel multitasking might sound appealing, but it comes with significant hidden costs—costs specific to how we process and experience the world.

1. A Fragmented Experience: When we isolate our attention to just one sensory channel, we experience a different version of reality. For example, in Max Zampini's "sonic chip" experiment, participants perceived stale chips as fresh simply because they made them "hear" the sound of fresh chips while chewing them. Focusing on one channel can prevent us from seeing the whole picture, creating totally different or misleading experiences. The truth is that we hear by seeing, we see by hearing, we taste by smelling, we taste by seeing…You keep going with all the combinations.

2. Weaker Connections, Poorer Recall: Multichannel multitasking limits the connections our brain can form. Memory and recall are deeply tied to the number and richness of connections we create. When we use fewer senses or divide our attention across tasks, we form shallower and less robust knowledge—knowledge that fades quickly and is harder to recall later.

3. Reduced creativity. The richness of these concepts is the foundation of creativity. Creativity thrives on finding new connections—sometimes between things that seem highly improbable. Machines, for instance, connect what's likely or logical. But humans? We excel at linking seemingly unrelated ideas to solve problems and find innovative solutions. The more complex connections we form, the more we can think deeply, problem-solve, and generate innovative ideas and solutions.

4. Reinforcing Unhealthy Habits: Multichannel multitasking perpetuates the belief that we must fill every free space, in this case, the sense not directly involved in a task, with "productive" activity so that we can maximize our resources at all times. This habit teaches us to avoid stillness, making us impatient and less able to stay present or enjoy moments. It also reduces our ability to tolerate discomfort or the feeling of not being fully busy, leading to a constant chase for productivity at the expense of our well-being.

A Better Approach

To save time and improve productivity, practice focusing all your senses on one task instead. This approach:

• Strengthens connections in your brain.
• Enhances memory, recall, and learning.
• Boosts creativity.
• Helps you deeply enjoy what you're doing.
• Help you build persistence and patience.

Remember, just because you can multitask—and yes, it's a remarkable survival advantage—doesn't mean you should. Don't turn an emergency behavior into your default mode.

Stay centered, stay connected, stay sustainably focused.

Enjoy your weekend, and don't forget to share.

Further readings:

• We keep hearing that we should avoid multitasking, and I'm the first person suggesting it relentlessly. But what is it that we should actually avoid? Discover it here.

• It's better not to do cognitively demanding things simultaneously. But what about things so mechanical we don't have to think about, like walking? Discover the answer here.