How do disable "Whole project" builds?

Sometimes when I sync Gradle or run a Gradle task from the toolbar, this “Whole project” action starts running in my multi-project workspace. It is very annoying because compiling all projects and running tests lags the IDE and doesn't run the task I selected. Cancelling it also invalidates indexes, so I have to sync Gradle again. 
Is there a way to disable it entirely? I don't ever need to build **everything**.