The Multitasking Dilemma: Who Among Us Still Does It?

While some people certainly can multitask in this industry, the vast majority that I know (including myself) definitely find it more difficult to get things done (and done well) when handling multiple tasks at once, and can decrease efficiency with an overhead between each task change. A couple solutions that have worked for me:

1. Don't be afraid to block out "focus time" in your calendar/DND on your IM to not be interrupted and focus on one thing
2. Break your tasks into the smallest pieces possible because smaller tasks are generally easier to drop and pick up again later with less overhead (notably this advice has multiple other benefits too)

I do my best not to do multi-tasking in all kinds of work. It's mentally draining, extremely difficult to track your progress, and makes you prone to burn out.

I do tasks in parallel with each other if they fall into something that needs minimal attention or has less risk of when you make a mistake. With that being said, i judge which task to do in parallel if they are menial or two tasks whose context are much closer to each other. But as much as possible, i do not do multi-tasking. I don't do codding work while i deploy my changes to production at the same time. I wait for the deployment to finish while i answer some questions and participate on conversations on team channels. But i never do two things with completely different contexts at the same time.

Distractions are choices, and by that you can choose which ones you want to pay attention. You just need to asses them by urgency and importance. Remember, do few things and do them well. Do things well and make things done.

I’m usually fine multitasking in all cases, except incident response. Case-in-point, libcurl. :(