Originally found at Psychology Today

The line between work and personal life has become increasingly blurred. Many of us check work emails during family dinners, attend virtual meetings from home, and manage personal tasks during work hours. My coauthors on a recent paper (Ekonkar Kaur, who led the paper, plus Marcus Butts and Allison Gabriel) and I explored the implications of this overlap in research published in the Academy of Management Review. Understanding both the costs and benefits is crucial for achieving human sustainability—maintaining mental health, productivity, and balance in the long run.

Many people believe they can seamlessly engage in work and nonwork activities simultaneously. Picture a parent helping with their child’s homework while responding to work emails. This vision of multitasking sounds ideal, but the reality is different. True multitasking, where our attention is equally divided between tasks, is extremely rare.

In most situations, we rapidly switch our attention between work and nonwork. One moment we’re focused on a work task; the next, we’re pulled into a family matter, only to jump back minutes later. These "domain switches" can happen multiple times in a short span, creating a fragmented experience. Despite their prevalence, existing theories on work-life integration often assume people can fully blend these domains without considering the mental limits that make genuine simultaneity nearly impossible.

Continue reading the original article at Psychology Today.

Read the original research in Academy of Management Review.

Learn more about the AOM Scholar and explore their work:

• Ekonkar Kaur, University of Washington
• Christopher M. Barnes, National University of Singapore and University of Washington
• Marcus M. Butts, Southern Methodist University
• Allison S. Gabriel, Purdue University