The Myth of the Multitasking Superpower

Survival Isn’t Strength

For a long time, I thought multitasking was my greatest strength.

I could handle a baby in one arm and a toddler discovering the joy of banging pot lids with the wooden spoon, a phone wedged between my shoulder and ear, laundry spinning, lunch half-eaten, a dozen tabs open in my brain.

Later, it became the same routine, just different props: cooking while replying to customers, polishing a bracelet while writing a blog draft, helping kids with their math, burning the food half of the times, an endless to-do list at the back of my head, mind half in the sink, half at work, half on the to-do list that never ended.

I felt proud of it. Why wouldn't I? Not many can be 10 different people with 10 different roles, doing 10 different things and all at once.

Yup. I felt like I had discovered some secret gear that others didn’t have, or I was born gifted with the Multitasking Superpower and I had earned the invisible badge of honor for single mothers, small business owners, women who somehow manage to carry it all.

And it wasn’t strength. It took me years to realize.

The Slow Fade of Burnout

It was survival mode on.

But survival mode isn’t meant to last forever. It can't. Our system doesn't allow that.

The exhaustion didn’t come suddenly, I didn't wake up one morning unable to get out of bed. It was sneaky. It crept in, soft and patient, like fog.

At first, I thought I was just tired, that I had slept poorly, that maybe I hadn't eaten well the day before. Anyone would be tired when they're the only adult in the room, with that kind of workload!

I couldn’t see that the real damage wasn’t in the amount of work itself, but in trying to do everything myself and simultaneously.

My brain began misfiring in small, humiliating ways: sending out the wrong order, burning food, locking myself out of the house. Trying to read my book at nights, and the letters jumping in front of my eyes, going back to reread the same paragraph, the same sentence. My focus was gone. I once even got at the post office with a bag of packages to ship, and I had left my wallet at home.

(yeah, don't start, I don't use my phone for payments. But guess what? I had forgotten my phone too. And my keys.)

I had to start saying things out loud before leaving:  "keys, phone, wallet, check, lights off, nothing running, check", just to avoid forgetting something.

Even time had lost its shape.

Or maybe I started losing sense of time since COVID lockdowns.

Time felt like... I don't know how to describe it. But one day it was early spring, then suddenly five days before schools close for the summer. I remembered my kids birthdays, but I caught myself confusing one year's birthday with another. Memories were still alive, but in the wrong order. 

At some point, days passed, but I wasn’t living them. I was just executing them like a machine running low on charge.

And as a person who loves everything about patterns, I started studying myself. 

(How do you study yourself? I am not sure how I can teach you that. But I can tell you that all it needs, is to draw a distance between you and yourself. I will definitely write a separate article about this once I'm able to put everything in the correct words.)

So, I remembered my grandma's words, years, decades ago: "Look at my certifications hanging on the wall in shiny frames. Look at my badges of honor". I looked, there was nothing. She caught my confusion. "See? No one gave me a prize for doing it all. What did I earn by shattering myself into pieces? Nothing. Nothing is ever enough".

"I think I'm doing something wrong", I thought.

How Fragmented Energy Drains You

"That’s burnout."

Maybe not the obvious one - at least not how I've seen it in the movies or read about in articles and social media posts. But it was.

That slow dissolving of attention and emotion until you become a hollow operator of your own life, is a burnout too.

People often talk about burnout as if it’s tied only to long hours or impossible deadlines.

But it’s not always about how much you work. Sometimes it’s about how fragmented you become in the process.

Ah, grandma. How much you knew.

When every ounce of your focus is sliced into thin pieces - one sliver for the meal, one for the order, one for the phone notification, one for the mental to-do list, one for one kid, one for the other kid and so on - you’re spending your energy in fragments.

And fragmented energy doesn’t regenerate. It drains you, even after just a few hours, leaving you with that strange emptiness that you carry until the end of the day, the kind where all you want to do is lie down and stare at the ceiling, not sad, not angry, not sleepy, maybe not even tired, just... numb (?)

At some point, I decided I couldn’t keep living like that. I didn’t want to forget my own life in the name of getting everything done. And I was pretty sure, that this was an early stage of something worse, and I didn't want to see it.

Boundaries: Hard but Vital

I forced myself to stop.

Not suddenly! I wish it was that easy. But I didn't know what else to do, so I started small, as I do with everything.

Every night before sleep, I’d mentally walk through the next day.

Step by step and one by one, like the pace of a turtle, repeating again and again until it gets recorded in my mental to-do list.

It was more like a quiet agreement with myself. Or like teaching myself a new way to operate. Or both.

Wake up at five.

Write for the blog and prepare the social media posts.

At seven, lunch for the kids.

Leave the house at eight. Take kids at school.

Go to the Gym. Do your workout. Don't think of what's next. It's not time.

Grocery store on the way back.

Take a shower.

Work on orders until 1 pm, sharp.

1 pm hits, hands down. What you did, you did. What you finished, well done. What's left, let it be. 

And when one o’clock came, I’d stop.

Even if a bracelet was half-done, even if I had more orders to prepare, even if there was another draft to polish, even if I was “almost finished.”

That was the hardest part and for a few weeks it left me with itchy hands and a bit of guilt.

Because all my life, I believed discipline meant never leaving things unfinished.

(Growing up in a house full of uniformed men, anyone?)

But here I am now, learning that discipline also means knowing when to stop, even when your mind resists it.

Some things will remain half-finished, and that’s okay. The world doesn’t end. The to-do list can wait. 

The to-do list, never ends.

I changed my processing times from 1-3 days to 1-5. Etsy hates this. It's a Casus Belli for "the customer placed an order 5 minutes ago, why isn't shipped yet?" Etsy/Amazon/Any Marketplace frenzy, but it was really a declaration:

I will no longer sacrifice my sanity to meet a pace that it's not mine, that it isn't natural, that it isn't sustainable for a person. Any person. 

Some orders go out on the fifth day now. And I’ve made peace with that. No guilt. No apologies. If one can't be responsible enough to order a handmade, customized item early enough, why do I have to make this mine? To keep a Star Seller Badge? I've kept it for years and never affected positively my shop. Losing it didn't affect it negatively, either.

Grandma was right.

"Look, my badges hanging from the wall."

Work never ends. There will always be something waiting. there will always be something that needs to be done. 

One more email, one more message, one more order, one more article, one more post, one more thing “you could just finish real quick.” Another laundry basket full of dirty socks, another dusty corner, another cat hairball under the table, another unwashed pot, another kid's activity, another movie you never managed to watch, another unfinished book, another thing in the to-do list. It's endless.

You can’t win that race. The faster you go, the faster the treadmill spins.

Don't be an ego lifter in life. 

You honestly don't have to.

I adopted a new motto: "Be my guest".

When my kids rush me because they want a specific outfit for tomorrow, I just smile and say, “Be my guest.” If that shirt needs washing while there are already 10 more available in the closet, the machine’s right there. When an order is placed during weekend, I ignore it until Monday morning.

I've finally learned to say "I’m done for the day. I’m taking a shower, and then I’m reading my book."

I am not available.

End of the story.

Boundaries.

They sound harsh, they are unpleasant (for others), they make you look selfish (alright, I can live with that),

until you realize they’re the only way to keep your sanity.

It's the only way to keep your mental and physical health, in order to keep on keeping on!

Plus, if I collapse, who's going to take care of my kids? Who's going to run my shop? Who's going to take care of me?

People talk a lot about "find your balance" as if it’s something you find once and keep forever. It’s not. It’s something you rebuild every single day, by choosing where your energy goes and where it doesn’t.

By saying no when it needs.

You only get a limited number of Mental Energy Tokens each day. If you waste them all trying to be everywhere at once, you end up nowhere at all.

That’s what multitasking steals from you: It's not only the time, but the presence. The ability to inhabit your own moments.

The "Whatever you do, be there".

One thing at a time.

With both hands, both eyes, and full mind.

Then stop, and move to the next.

It’s slower, yes. But it’s also cleaner, quieter, healthier and far more honest. To you. To what matters.

- Rest isn’t laziness. It’s the presence of yourself.

- Multitasking drains presence.

- Boundaries restore it.

- Rest is required, not optional.

Boundaries are not selfish. They are self-protection. They are reminders. They are guidance towards light, when everything feels dark. I've made a list of the 10 symbols to wear when you've lost your way and need a guide back. Being a multitasker for too long, can make you lose your way. 

Stop multitasking. Seriously.