That article is an excerpt of David Epstein's new book, Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better.

We live in a world that gives us seemingly infinite choices and prizes freedom above all else. We have an unprecedented number of options regarding what to do, who to be, and how to spend our time. All that choice is wonderful; it is also overwhelming. The irony is that total freedom can be paralyzing, and unlimited resources don't necessarily lead to the biggest breakthroughs. In fact, overvaluing complete freedom can be disastrous for everything from starting a company to harnessing creativity to finding personal satisfaction.

David Epstein argues that all of us — individuals, businesses, institutions, even societies — can benefit from narrowing our options. He dives into the science and practice of constraints, exploring exactly when and how guardrails can be beneficial, whether we're working with limited resources or using self-imposed boundaries to tap unexpected wells of focus and innovation.

Amen to this. I'd venture to say I can not multitask at all, I'm merely which back and forth between two or more tasks, unsure I'm doing either fully or competently.

Another big downside for me is that I feel I don't learn anything when I split my attention. I think one of the reasons I could learn so quick as a kids (say under 25) is that I could focus on one thing for hours. Now, as a grown-ass man, I get distracted by everything and my ability to learn has faded with my attention span.

Highly recommend the books Stolen Focus by Jonathan Hari, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr and Deep Work by Cal Newport. All deal with this idea and Newport dives into the value of extended focus in a time when fewer and fewer people have developed that muscle.

I worked with Dr. Gloria Mark, mentioned in this article, on several papers looking at attention switching in primary care physicians during non-patient facing time. The doctors worked at an integrated health system that encourages patients to send secure messages to their doctors. For one part of the study, we gave physicians smartwatches and looked at their heart rate variability (a measure of stress) during time periods when they were processing their inboxes. It was pretty clear just how much the email work was stressing them out. Building that dataset was a monumental task, but we did get about 5 peer-reviewed publications out of it, at least.