I found multitasking to be a waste of time
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Quite some time ago I did something very strange, which opened my eyes to how much time I waste on the internet: I banned myself from multitasking for a whole week. This wasn't some quest to become more productive. This was an experiment where I would give whatever I was doing my complete attention. If I was watching a pointless video or even just listening to music; that's all I was doing. I was curious as to how much, or how little, I would achieve. As in this experiment I was going to consume the same amount of content as I always would, which was many countless hours, because normally I would have some YouTube video playing in the background while I was being 'productive'. As I was under the impression that it didn't take any time away from me as it was just some 'background second monitor content' which I could easily multitask through.
I was very wrong.
Despite doing nothing but consuming content on the internet for the majority of my free time, the focus I experienced when I was working made up for it. So I ended up achieving the same amount of work.
This was a horrifying revelation. Thinking about the amount of things I could have achieved if I just didn't have stupid YouTube running in the background horrified me. As it is a habit I developed and kept for many years.
Multitasking is a complete waste of time. It is a lie we tell ourselves just because the extra mental simulation feels good, and it is also passive, so it requires no extra effort on our part. We prolong our work with a distraction of something we rather be doing instead. And once the work session is over we feel productive because our minds have been under the constant bombardment of enjoyable stimulation.
Now while reading this you might be saying to yourself, "This single pentiumed fool just has no ability to multitask! But it doesn't affect me!" But when was the last time you tried not multitasking? I encourage you to experiment. That is if your are brave enough to confront yourself with the possible truth that you've wasted years of time lying to yourself.