Why do I panic in the gap between tasks, not during them?

You finish one task. The next has not started. In that gap, the fear rises — fast, sharp, out of proportion to anything happening. Your pod has likely seen this in you, or in each other. It looks like restlessness, or a sudden need to check messages, or a held breath. Here is what is happening. The mind cannot rest in emptiness. It is built to hold an object — a task, a thought, a worry. When one task ends and the next has not arrived, the mind does not go still. It reaches. And the thing nearest at hand, in an anxious mind, is fear. This is not a character flaw. It is a gap in structure. A gap in structure can be closed — not by willpower alone, but by practice, done together. A pod that builds a shared bridge across these gaps changes the pattern faster than one person working alone.