You have probably heard at some point that multitasking is a myth. Decades of research have shown that when people try to perform two attention-demanding tasks at the same time, performance on both suffers. Errors increase and speed decreases.
The issue is not that the brain cannot do two things at once. It is that it cannot reliably perform two tasks that require the same limited executive resources at the same time. It is switching rapidly between tasks, not doing them simultaneously. Every switch that divides attention this way costs the brain both fuel and focus, and it cannot reliably maintain the one task without compromising the other.
Can We Beat the Bottleneck?
You might push back and think of people who appear to be great multitaskers: the Michelin-star chef in the Saturday rush, the fighter pilot maneuvering at supersonic speed. Yes, a very small subset of people appear to actually multitask. But are they actually overcoming the bottleneck, or are they relying on highly practiced skills that no longer require the same degree of executive control? The answer appears to be that they are doing both: relying on highly practiced neural systems and reducing their dependence on the executive bottleneck.
Especially if you work with, live with, or are yourself someone who struggles chronically with executive function, you’ve been challenged as more task switching becomes embedded in the requirements of work, school, and life. You may wonder: How can I improve my brain function when I’m stuck in the executive function switching bottleneck? It’s possible, but first here is a reminder of why multitasking is hard.
Every time the brain switches between demanding tasks, it must engage several executive processes:
Working memory updating: This is the ability to rapidly clear out irrelevant data to make space for holding new, complex instructions in active memory. When it runs slower than incoming information, it’s like having a tapas plate when you need a platter.
Deliberate suppression: This kind of focus helps to minimize the biological “lag time” required for the brain to load the rules of a new task in the face of distractions, internal anxiety, or competing thoughts.
Cognitive and emotional load: Managing competing goals, identity concerns, uncertainty, anticipated failure, social threat, or conflicting values consumes executive resources that would otherwise be available for task performance.
At any given moment, though, trying to manage incoming information, current goals, emotions, memories, distractions, rewards, and future consequences can exceed capacity, and bottlenecks will emerge. The good news is that the brain is not stuck forever. Researchers are beginning to understand how extensive practice can reduce reliance on the executive bottleneck and shift processing to other neural systems.
Location, Location, Location: Where to Beat the Bottleneck
Researchers at Georgetown University School of Medicine and Lehigh University recently published findings in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience that shed new light on what actually happens in the brain as a skill becomes automatized. Think of a simple habit that has been practiced to the point where the brain has not only learned the task; it has changed where it processes the task, too.
Study participants performed a visual categorization task more than 30,000 times over five to ten weeks. (Yes, that’s a lot!) Researchers used fMRI and EEG to track brain activity throughout the process. They observed that early in performing the task, participants’ engagement relied heavily on the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s seat of executive control, deliberate reasoning, and conscious effort. While this region is powerful, it has limited capacity. It can only handle so much at once.
After extensive practice, though, participants’ brain scans showed that their processing activity migrated toward regions of the temporal cortex involved in storing and accessing learned category information. Performing the task had meaningfully moved out of the “executive suite” and into more automatic brain territory. With the practiced task no longer competing for prefrontal executive resources, participants could perform a second task simultaneously. This is what the researchers describe as a form of “true multitasking,” because the practiced task no longer depended heavily on the same executive bottleneck.
Thinking Differently About Multitasking
Where a task is processed by the brain matters. So how is this different from trying to do two things at the same time, and importantly, how can it help the brain bottleneck?
The new study does not mean multitasking is back on the table for novel, demanding tasks. Performing two attention-demanding, unfamiliar tasks will continue to simultaneously degrade time and accuracy. What the new research shows is something more specific: when one task has been practiced extensively enough to become genuinely automatic, it no longer competes heavily for the executive resources that the second task needs.
A fair summary might be: humans generally cannot perform two executive-demanding tasks at once. But with sufficient practice, one task can become automated enough that it stops drawing on executive resources and at that point, true concurrent processing becomes possible. If this sounds like a good argument for developing solid learning skills and building habits, you are already on the right track to more flexible executive function.
The practical lesson is not that we should become better multitaskers. It is that every skill we automate frees executive resources for the next challenge. The fastest way through the bottleneck is often not to push harder on everything at once. It is to deliberately automate the fundamentals so the brain has more executive capacity available for what is new, complex, or unexpected.
Your Brain Is Not Broken: It’s Working As Designed
Task execution is a capacity issue that any brain can face. For people who struggle chronically with executive function, whether due to ADHD, learning differences, anxiety, chronic stress, or the accumulated weight of repeated failure, sustained practice may be understandably hard. It is also what eventually makes the work easier and the experience of doing it less exhausting.
When you or someone you care about is struggling, it can help to ask, “What cognitive real estate is this task currently occupying?” Is this person learning through structured practice or testing their system to exhaustion?
Reference
Cox, P. H., & Riesenhuber, M. (2026). Extensive Experience Remodels Neural Task Circuitry to Escape the Frontal Bottleneck and Increase Automaticity of Categorization. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_02618
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I work directly with individuals who have chronic, longstanding struggles, who have been told to try harder, organize better, or just do it, and for whom those instructions are overwhelming rather than inspiring.
