What Distraction Does to Your Brain—and How To Regain Cognitive Control | Adam Gazzaley

It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, one of the uh recurring themes on this show and something I think about a lot personally is that we have these ancient brains that are often ill-suited to our modern high-tech environment. And this evolutionary mismatch can create anxiety, stress, depression, insomnia, and many other vexations.

And one of the principal ways in which modern life can overtax our brains is distraction. You might be the type of person who likes to brag about how good you are at multitasking, but nobody is good at multitasking. Write that down, put it up on the wall. Multitasking is a computer term. Our brains can only focus on one thing at a time.

So multitasking is a neurological impossibility. In fact, one way to translate the word multitasking is doing several things at the same time poorly. And even if you're not the type to deliberately try to multitask, it's really easy to have your attention pulled away, even if you're monotasking by the constant ringing and pinging of your phone. Which brings me to today's episode where you're going to hear from one of the world's leading experts on the subject of distraction. His name is Adam Ghazali.

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