We should be thankful for our ability to multitask. If we couldn’t shift our mental gears quickly, we wouldn’t be able to have a conversation while cooking a meal, listen to music while composing an email, or walk and chew gum at the same time. Life would be dull.
But as neuroscientist Daniel Levitin explains in the excerpt below, multitasking can all too easily become pathological. When we expend too much of our mental energy skipping from one thing to the next, we cut ourselves off from the highest forms of thought our brains are capable of. Conceptual and critical thinking, insight, and ingenuity emerge only when we screen out distractions and focus our minds.
Turning off the multitasking instinct is becoming ever more difficult. Our modern technological environment seems designed to scatter our attention. But making the effort to escape the informational whirlwind remains essential.
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