Yesterday evening, I went to the gym around 7:00 at night. I was doing my normal workout routine when I suddenly started feeling light in the head, and literally starting seeing black. Everything I stared at was blurry, fading in and out, and I actually thought I was going to fall flat on the floor in the middle of the "fitness court." This got me thinking about stress and multi-tasking. Are we putting too much pressure on ourselves all the time to just do too much? Even more importantly, what is the price we are paying on our bodies and our minds by constantly juggling 800 different things all at once?
Dr. Hallowell, a former Harvard Medical School instructor says that actively paying attention to more than one task at a time can be literally impossible. "You end up paying conscious attention to several tasks in rapid succession; making macaroni and cheese, unloading the dryer, feeding the dog," he explains. In doing this, your brain must restart and refocus, resulting in wasted time to make the shift-in which you make no progress on either task.
