Ask HN: How not to multitask

When people say that multitasking is bad for productivity, I understand the arguments - but I think the real question is not whether it's bad, but to what extent it's bad.

There's downtime in most things:

- Waiting for software to be installed - Waiting for a process to finish - Waiting for a slow website to load - A client puts our phone call hold for a few minutes - Waiting for pasta to cook - Waiting for a document to finish printing

Obviously NO multitasking in some situations, like software being installed (when you know it's going to take half an hour), is less productive than "multitasking" (filling that hour with something else).

Most multitasking articles seem to be arguments for why multitasking is bad in general, rather than a detailed discussion of what's productive multitasking and what isn't. I'd like to see some articles on for what sized waiting blocks a human brain should context-switch, or how we can fill this waiting blocks with activities that aren't too distracting from the original task. References? Thoughts?