Distraction, an issue that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else, happens to everyone, every day whether it is realized or not. Multitasking, the handling of more than one task at the same time by a single person, also an everyday issue that most people do not even think about being an issue to their everyday life, but little do they know without this type distraction they could get forty percent more of their work done. Distraction is everywhere, and with distraction comes multitasking, this combination is something that should be avoided if possible.
Focusing on one task has been the biggest issue with the creation of the internet and smartphones. Dewatripont mentions in his paper, “focusing on the two-task case for simplicity, the mainstream multitask problem is based on the observation
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Jordan Grafman, neuroscientist and chief of the cognitive neuroscience section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke or NINDS, stated that “kids that are instant messaging while doing homework, playing games online and watching TV, I predict, aren’t going to do well in the long run.” Grafman has conducted decades of research that demonstrate “that the quality of one’s output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks,” (Wallis, 2006). Donald Roberts, a professor of communication at Stanford, noted that students “can’t go the few minutes between their 10 o’clock and 11 o’clock classes without talking on their cell phones. It seems to me that there’s almost a discomfort with not being stimulated--a kind of ’I can’t stand the silence.’” Grafman explains that it’s not actually multitasking, but really “you’re doing more than one thing, but you’re ordering them and deciding which one to do at any one time,” therefore not