We can walk and talk at the same time, but when it comes to paying attention multi-tasking doesn’t work. The brain naturally focuses on things one at a time, and sequentially.
There’s a sequential order that the brain goes through every time you switch from one task to another. That’s why we find ourselves losing track of previous progress, wondering where we left off. A person who is interrupted takes 50% longer to accomplish a task and makes up to 50% more errors.
Large fractions of a second are consumed every time the brain switches tasks, making multi-tasking dangerous in some situations. For example, driving while talking on a cell phone is almost as dangerous as drunk driving. It takes only a half second for a driver going 70 mph to travel 51 feet.
More than half of visual cues spotted by attentive drivers are missed by cell-phone talkers. Eighty percent of crashes happen within three seconds of some kind of driver distraction. One study showed that simply reaching for an object while driving multiplies the risk of a cash or near crash by 900%.
155-2731-8020