There are plenty of people, that truly believe that they are the exception to the rule; of which, the rule in question, is the distraction of cell phones, in which, many a person believes that their cell phone, and its incumbent text messaging, phone calls, social media alerts, and emails, does not serve as much of a distraction to them, at all, for they are multi-tasking savants. This type of belief is pretty much a fallacy, for that which overly occupies our brain, or entices our brain, our serves as an interruption to our brain, in a manner in which our concentration flags on the task on hand, is, by definition, a distraction.
Imagine this for a poignant example, the world’s most esteemed heart surgeon is demonstrating their prowess by allowing a multitude of people to watch them actually perform their surgery in real-time on an especially complicated case, literally involving the life or death of that patient, of which, within the ear of that surgeon, there is a Bluetooth earpiece attached to her ear, and somewhat incredibly, during the most intricate stage of that surgery, that surgeon answers a phone call and animatedly begins speaking to that caller. Would this seem to be prudent behavior, or would this appear to be something that should be properly considered to be wholly unacceptable?
The fact of the matter is, in the most important areas of our life, whether this is something that we are performing ourselves, or whether it is somebody else doing the work, we know for a certainty, that those that are fully engaged in the activity at hand, are going to, more times than not, be able to successfully accomplish in a competent manner what needs to be so done; as compared to somebody that is distracted by whatever that it may so be, including, for instance, the obvious distraction of a cell phone, that keeps ringing, or beeping, or buzzing.
The problem with cell phones is not just all of the activity that a cell phone is capable of receiving, but also the fact that the cell phone is often within our grasp, or within our field of vision, or even just on our mind, which all serves to distract us from the necessary things that we need to do as well as to accomplish at a given time. That sort of distraction is definitely not good for those that should and need to be concentrating on the task at hand, and serves thereby as something that in the scheme of things, makes us far less efficient, and far less effective, than what we should or could be, all for something, that isn’t worthy of our actual attention, all of the time.
The most insidious thing about cell phones is the fact that while the vast majority of messages and notifications aren’t typically of any real relevancy or importance to us, there are going to be those exceptions in which the message or notification is something that is highly important to us, which signifies, that because we don’t know whether or not such a notification is going to be meaningful or not, this serves to keep us always attentive to that cell phone, because that message so received, but unknown, might well be the one, that means everything to us. So then, the fact that at any time, our cell phone may provide us with some actionable information, makes us overly attentive to it, and thereby means that whatever that we are supposed to be doing, will suffer for that always-on, cell phone distraction.