Compulsive Parallel-Tasking as Efficiency-Maximization Wrong Attractor: The Multitasking-Compulsion Architecture, Single-Focus Foreclosure Basin, and the Return to Calibrated Attentional Depth

Compulsive parallel-tasking — the habitual, anxiety-driven splitting of attention across multiple simultaneous workstreams — presents as efficiency maximization but functions as a dynamical wrong attractor that forecloses access to calibrated attentional depth (S 0). This paper develops a displacement framework for analyzing the multitasking-compulsion architecture: we define S 0 as the ground state of single-focused, calibrated cognitive engagement; the displacement function D() as the real-time cost of deviation from this ground state under compulsive parallel-task load; and the integrated displacement = D()\,dt as cumulative attentional debt.

We characterize the wrong attractor W as a stable basin in cognitive phase space from which voluntary exit is structurally impaired, not merely a preference pattern. Nine propositions (P1–P9) formalize the architecture's key properties: the asymmetric cost structure of splitting versus focusing, the foreclosure basin that makes single-focus feel aversive once compulsion is entrenched, the phase transition dynamics between productive and compulsive regimes, and the intervention logic required for return.

We extend the analysis to systemic effects, showing how compulsive parallel-tasking propagates through collaborative and institutional environments. The framework offers both a diagnostic apparatus and a recovery map for individuals and organizations caught in the multitasking-compulsion wrong attractor.