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Our capacity to juggle several tasks at once is among the most important capabilities of the human cognitive system. Just consider a typical day in the life of a modern human: you glance at your phone while waiting for coffee to brew, skim headlines while half-listening to a podcast, mentally rehearse a client pitch while walking your child to school, reply noted on Slack during a meeting while updating a slide deck, check your bank balance while standing in line, and, in a moment of entirely optional productivity theatre, scroll through a friends Facebook feed to see what their cat had for breakfast (admittedly, not the most important addition to our already heavy repertoire of multi-tasks). If these familiar episodes of multitasking barely register as effort, it is because they have been absorbed into habit, woven into the fabric of daily life, quietly showing how often we coordinate competing goals, priorities, and impulses at once. For all the noise about AI agents, it is worth remembering that human agents remain remarkably capable. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} That said, generative AI and AI agents add yet another layer of temptation to multitask, and a respectable excuse for doing so. Now we can draft an email while an agent prepares slides, ask a chatbot to summarize a report while we skim LinkedIn, generate code while answering Slack, or prompt three models at once while half-editing a memo. This feels like augmented productivity, but often becomes cognitive diffusion or an increase in work intensity. As I illustrated in I, Human, when machines take over fragments of thinking, we become supervisors of many shallow streams rather than authors of one coherent argument. The result is not just intellectual sloppiness, but a steady erosion of focus, as attention shifts from solving a problem to managing tools that promise to solve it for us. A bad rap To be sure, multitasking tends to get a bad rap, especially among cognitive psychologists and behavioral scientists. This skepticism is well grounded. In a widely cited meta-analysis, researchers showed that alternating between tasks produces measurable switch costs in both speed and accuracy, even when tasks are simple. Subsequent research also found that heavy media multitaskers performed worse on tests of attention control and working memory, suggesting that frequent task-switching may erode the very cognitive filters that make focus possible. A more recent synthesis including examination of social media effects linked media multitasking during studying to significantly poorer academic outcomes. More recent neuroscientific evidence also shows that habitual multitasking is associated with reduced grey-matter density in regions linked to cognitive control, and some scholars have pointed out that multitasking deducts the equivalent of 10-IQ points from our performance and is therefore more debilitating than smoking weed (presumably minus the benefits or self-perceived creativity!). Taken together, the evidence is rather compelling: multitasking is not a sign of superior efficiency but a tax on attention, trading depth for the comforting illusion of productivity. It makes us feel busy, sometimes even clever, yet especially for complex, analytical, or creative work it is usually worse than doing one thing well at a time, or learning to focus. Supertaskers And yet, that is not to say that we are all equally bad at multitasking. In fact, as in most areas of cognition, there are meaningful individual differences. A small but influential line of research has even identified a group sometimes labelled supertaskers. In a dual-task experiment involving simulated driving and mental arithmetic, researchers identified a minority of participants who showed virtually no performance drop when handling two demanding tasks at once. These individuals tended to score higher on measures of working memory capacity and executive control (proxies for higher IQ), suggesting that cognitive resources, more than motivation or confidence, set the ceiling on multitasking ability. Working memory is analogous to a computers RAM, in that it determines how many pieces of information can be actively held and processed at once. Individuals with greater working-memory capacity possess more cognitive bandwidth to manage competing demands, though the limits remain real for everyone. In line, studies consistently show that people with higher working memory capacity, stronger attentional control, and better fluid intelligence incur smaller task-switching costs. Working memory capacity predicts resistance to distraction, while Unsworth and Engle (2007) linked it to superior performance in complex attention tasks, and executive attention explains substantial variance in multitasking performance. The role of personality Unsurprisingly, personality also plays a role: most notably, traits linked to self-regulation and planning, such as conscientiousness, tend to buffer against the negative effects of multitasking, while impulsivity and related tendencies are associated with poorer performance. Broader Big Five traits such as extraversion, neuroticism, and openness show mixed effect, often influencing how people approach multitasking rather than how well they actually perform it. Even training and domain expertise matter. Air-traffic controllers, surgeons, and experienced gamers show reduced switching costs in their domains because practice automates sub-tasks, freeing cognitive bandwidth. This does not mean that people know how good they actually are at multitasking. As in most domains of competence, the share of people who claim to excel far exceeds the share who truly do. In a classic experiment, researchers found that heavy media multitaskers rated themselves as effective jugglers of attention yet performed worse on tests of working memory and attentional control. The pattern echoes a broader principle from behavioral science, familiar from the DunningKruger literature: when a skill is poorly understood and rarely measured, confidence tends to rise as competence falls. Multi-tasking, like leadership or emotional intelligence, is easy to overestimate because busyness looks like effectiveness, and we remember the rare occasions when juggling worked, not the many when it quietly degraded our thinking. Taken together, the evidence paints a nuanced picture. The average human is indeed a poor multi-tasker, especially when tasks are novel or cognitively demanding. But some individuals, by virtue of higher executive capacity (raw mental horsepower), disciplined habits, specialized training, and the right personality, are less bad at it. That distinction matters for leadership and talent assessment, because it reminds us that multitasking ability is not a universal virtue or vice. It is a measurable cognitive skill, unevenly distributed across people, and often confused with confidence, busyness, or the social theatre of productivity. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. 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If you have ever interviewed for a job, there is a non-trivial probability that you have encountered tricky or quirky interview questions. These are questions that are intentionally unexpected, abstract, or only loosely related to the actual requirements of the role. Rather than systematically assessing job-relevant skills, they are designed to surprise candidates, test composure, or signal creativity. Interviewers often defend these questions as clever ways to evaluate problem-solving ability, cultural fit, or performance under pressure. The evidence tells a different story. Decades of research in industrial-organizational psychology show that unstructured, brainteaser-style interviews have low predictive validity. They generate noise, not insight. At best, they measure how comfortable someone is with improvisation. At worst, they measure how similar the candidate is to the interviewer. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Cases in point To illustrate the point, here are some common examples, ordered from least absurd, or at least somewhat defensible, to most absurd: 1. What is your biggest weakness?Nominally job-related, though usually answered strategically rather than honestly. The only rational way to respond is to disguise a strength as a flaw. It is less a test of self-awareness than an audition for plausible humility. 2. Sell me this pen.Some relevance for sales roles, but still an artificial performance detached from real context. Popularized by The Wolf of Wall Street, it reinforces the myth that great sales is about fast talk rather than listening, diagnosing needs, and building trust. 3. Tell me about a time you failed.In principle, a legitimate behavioral question. In practice, often an invitation to narrate a carefully curated setback that highlights resilience, grit, and eventual triumph. It rewards storytelling ability more than learning agility. 4. How many tennis balls can fit inside a Boeing 747?A classic guesstimate puzzle meant to test structured thinking. Geeks may love it, but it predicts little beyond prior exposure to similar puzzles. If you want to measure cognitive ability, there are far more reliable and validated tools. 5. How many windows are there in New York City?Same logic, further removed from any realistic job task. For what its worth, large language models estimate the number in the tens of millions, depending on assumptions. Which illustrates the deeper point: if ChatGPT can answer it in seconds, why are we using it to judge human potential? 6. If you were an animal, which one would you be and why?A thinly veiled personality quiz. It feels like a BuzzFeed throwback disguised as talent assessment. The answer often reveals more about the interviewers projections than the candidates traits. 7. If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be?A pleasant icebreaker masquerading as a values assessment. It doubles as a signaling exercise: how curious, cultured, contrarian, or provocative can you appear in under 30 seconds? Say Nelson Mandela and you signal virtue. Say Steve Jobs and you signal ambition. Say Machiavelli and you signal strategic depth. But say Stalin and suddenly the interview turns into a moral inquiry. Was that intellectual curiosity, dark humor, or deeply questionable judgment? The question reveals less about your leadership potential than about your risk appetite for reputational self-sabotage. 8. If you were a kitchen utensil, which one would you be?At this point, the exercise has drifted into sheer parody shows like The Office come to mind. Spoon suggests reliability. Knife signals edge. Spork implies versatility. The real variable being tested may simply be how badly you want the job, signaled by the fact that you havent just walked out of the room. The science So, what does the actual science of interviewing say? First, there is evidence that some interviewers are not merely misguided, but derive a certain Machiavellian pleasure from putting candidates on the spot. Research on interviewer behavior shows that individuals higher in everyday sadism or dominance are more likely to ask stress-inducing or intentionally uncomfortable questions. In other words, the brainteaser may sometimes be less about assessing you and more about interviewers enjoying the deviant power dynamic. Second, the predictive validity of unstructured interviews is consistently low. Meta-analyses spanning decades show that traditional, free-flowing interviews correlate only modestly with later job performance. The problem is not conversation per se, but inconsistency. Different candidates get different questions. Interviewers rely on intuition. Evaluation criteria shift midstream. The result is noise, bias, and overconfidence, and unfortunately, these issues often go undetected because of the subsequent confirmation bias or failure to admit mistakes by hiring managers. In essence, if an interviewer likes you, they will either continue to like you after you are hired or pretend you are doing a great job to avoid looking like a fool. By contrast, structured interviews work. The formula is hardly mysterious: define the competencies that matter for the job; ask all candidates the same job-relevant questions; anchor evaluations to predefined scoring rubrics; and combine interview data with other validated predictors such as cognitive ability or work samples. Behavioral questions about past actions and situational questions tied to realistic job scenarios consistently outperform seemingly clever riddles and quirky brain teasers. The role of AI And then there is AI, not so much the elephant in the room as the bull in the china shop, already rearranging the furniture while we are still debating the seating plan. In a world where candidates can rehearse flawless answers with generative tools, the theatrical interview becomes even more obsolete. Chatbots can generate polished responses to biggest weakness or sell me this pen in seconds. Ironically, the more predictable and formulaic the question, the easier it is to game. This raises the bar for employers: assessment must shift toward observable skills, simulations, job trials, and multi-source data. This does not mean interviews become irrelevant. It means they must evolve. When information is abundant and answers are cheap, the premium shifts from rehearsed narratives to demonstrated capability. Instead of asking candidates what they would do, employers can observe what they actually do: solve a real problem, analyze a live case, critique a flawed strategy, or collaborate with a future teammate. AI can help candidates prepare, but it cannot fully fake sustained performance in a realistic simulation. There is also a deeper irony. The very tools that allow candidates to polish their answers can help employers design better assessments. AI can assist in standardizing questions, generating competency-based scenarios, flagging bias in evaluation, and even predicting which interview questions correlate with outcomes. In other words, AI exposes the weakness of theatrical interviewing while simultaneously offering the tools to fix it. The real risk is not that candidates use AI. It is that employers fail to upgrade their methods accordingly. In sum, the future of interviewing is not about trickier questions. It is about better design. The uncomfortable truth is that quirky interview questions persist because they are fun, easy, and ego-affirming. But hiring is too important to be left to entertainment. If organizations are serious about talent, they must replace improvisational theatre with evidence-based assessments, and have the humility and self-critical honesty to truly test the outcome of their decisions to acknowledge when they are wrong, and make an effort to tweak things and improve. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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The workplace presents a distinctive set of disclosure dilemmas, beginning with the strange fan dance of interviewing. We are trying to put our best foot forward; to convince our potential employer were a perfect fit and consummate professional, yet were asked, What are your weaknesses? and What are the biggest mistakes youve made? Even the seemingly laidback So, tell me about yourself can feel like a trap. Where should we start? There has been a lot of buzz in recent years about the benefits of bringing your whole self to work. Theres some evidence for those benefits. Letting others see more of you than you might ordinarily show them forges bonds, including in the workplace. We saw this in the early pandemic, when hardened leaders suddenly turned into endearing softies the moment their toddlers mischievously ran into their home offices. But for compartmentalizers who prefer to keep work and personal life separate, the bring your whole self to work movement can be something of a nightmare. For others, like me, its freeing. But this new terrain is filled with land mines, and it can be hard to know when youre going to step on one. The question of how much of our authentic selves to share at work is a pivotal one. Its also a difficult one to answer. We want to share enough to feel understood and connected to others, but not so much that we alienate people or cause them to question our competence or our seriousness. Making matters even more complicated, each workplace has its own culture and its own norms about the degree of self-disclosure thats deemed appropriate. That doesnt mean theyre clearly articulated, usually far from it. We must discover them. And by no means should everyone decide to simply conform to those norms; bucking them might be good not only for ones own happiness and engagement at work, but for the whole team and for society at large. So how do we find the right balance? What are the trade-offs between being a little more open at work and keeping strict professional boundaries intact? How much backstage access can we give to our colleagues and our bosses without risking our workplace image? Backstage versus Front Stage: transparency versus vulnerability According to my colleague Monique Burns Thompson, who works closely with members of Gen Z, Todays generation craves a level of openness that is different from when I was a young professional. New York University organizational scientist Julianna Pillemers research suggests that revealing aspects of our backstage selves at work, when done thoughtfully, can help us build rapport and stand out in a good way. In workplace contexts, she recommends what Id call discerning authenticitya balancing act that involves giving colleagues some, but not total, access to our inner lives. When done well, Pillemer argues, it helps build trust and sparks more meaningful conversations. Over time, this kind of thoughtful openness can deepen workplace relationships, enhance collaboration, and even improve performance. What does it mean to be discerningly authenticto be open in a thoughtful way? Pillemer specifies two types of backstage access. The first, which she calls transparency, involves conveying openness by giving people a window into your thoughts, beliefs, or preferences. For example, you might say, Ive always been more drawn to the creative side of things, even though Im technically in a data-heavy role. This kind of sharing can carry some riskespecially if your perspective is unpopular or unexpectedbut it generally offers only a glimpse beneath the surface. The second level of access, which Pillemer calls vulnerability, goes deeper and carries more risk. It involves sharing potentially sensitive inner states such as intimate emotions, especially negative oneslike admitting that you feel insecure about public speaking or disclosing a disability that might lead others to underestimate you. For instance, someone might say, I get nervous presenting in front of senior leadership, even when I know the material cold (revealing a performance-related insecurity), or This kind of ambiguity is tough for me. I like having more structure, and Im trying to get more comfortable with the gray area (revealing a trait that might not align with organizational norms). One shortcut I find helpful is to think of transparency as cognitive openness and vulnerability as emotional openness. In contexts where impressions really matter, the line between transparency and vulnerability becomes a strategic one. Pillemer doesnt draw a hard line, but she emphasizes that vulnerability is riskierespecially in high stakes, evaluative settings like job interviews, where disclosing insecurities might chip away at perceptions of competence. If in doubt, transparency is the safer bet. Vulnerability should generally be avoided in those contexts unless, say, its framed as a story of growth or overcoming a challenge (I used to struggle with public speaking, so I joined Toastmasters). Even when youre explicitly invited to share something personallike in the dreaded tell me about a weakness questiontransparency often does the trick. You might offer cognitive openness: I think better in writing than I do speaking off the cuff. You could also frame it as growth: Ive learned to prep more deliberately for meetings so I can articulate my ideas clearly in real time. But if you give me a moment to organize my thoughts, Ill always bring sharper insight. This kind of thoughtful disclosure lines up with what Pillemer would call transparency: revealing how your mind works in a way thats candid but not risky. Vulnerability, by contrast, might involve admitting that you often doubt your abilities or fear being judgeddisclosures that could raise red flags unless carefully framed. Still, even in high-stakes settings, being a bit more open can help. From Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing by Leslie John published on February 24, 2026 by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright 2026 by Leslie John
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