I took a weeklong challenge to overcome internet addiction

John Hersey for Note to Self/WNYC

Admit it: We're all a little addicted to the Internet.

It's a magical place with endless portals to hilarious memes, clever tweets, and information about literally everything in the entire universe. But sometimes, it can feel a little draining to consume all of this content every day.

As a digital journalist who has to stay on top of  the latest Internet trends, I'm constantly taking in massive amounts of information  

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Here's what happened.

On Monday morning, I received my first challenge. I was only allowed to single-task.

On Day 1, I was forbidden to multi-task. Research shows that the brain is actually incapable of true multi-tasking. Instead of doing two things at once, the brain rapidly switches from one task to the next. For people like me who work online, our brains flip-flop an average of every 45 seconds.

The effects of multi-tasking has only been intensified by technology, neuroscientist Daniel Levitin said in an interview with "Note to Self's" Anush Zomorodi.

Levitin's research has shown that the more people switch tasks, the more stressed they feel.

As a reminder to only do one task at a time, I posted this note on my computer:

I was both surprised and ashamed how difficult it was to single-task. I tried my best to completely finish a story before I moved on to answering an email or research for another story.

But then every few minutes, a Gmail would pop up on my phone or a tweet would slide out from the app at the corner of the screen. And I gave into the temptation of multi-tasking a few times.

About midway through the day, 'Note to Self' texted me to check in.