I used to be proud of how many things I could juggle in a single day. It looked productive from the outside. What it actually was, once I started paying attention, was a slow leak that drained far more time and energy than any single task should have.
Every time attention moves from one task to a completely different one, there’s a cost to disengage and a separate cost to fully load into the next. For ADHD brains, that second cost tends to be higher and slower than average.
What helped most was structural: single-project blocks with a visible timer running, and closing communication channels during those blocks so notifications don’t force a switching cost for something that could have waited twenty more minutes.
If your days feel busy but your output feels thin, task switching is worth auditing. Reducing the number of switches, not working harder within each one, is usually where the real time comes from.