This is all work-related, but, as every single expert told me, switch-tasking is really horrible to do in your personal life. There are two obvious and common instances of this. One is using your phone while talking to another person. The phone, that unwanted guest, the figurative other man/woman/person in a relationship, creates a lack of presence, one that people notice right away, psychologist Ryan Howes told me. "It makes them feel not so important, not a priority," he said. "We think we’re good at masking that, but we’re not. It makes other person or people feel like lower priority, and that sucks."



The other is phone-ing (I just made that up, don't @ me) and driving. Miller is unequivocal in his opinion of the relationship between phones and cars: they do not belong together. "It’s not just the physical phone, it’s the cognitive demands of a conversation," he told me. "It's almost as bad to have a phone conversation using a headset." When two people are talking IRL in a car, both generally know when to quiet down or stop talking. Plus, the passenger is another set of eyes on road. That's not the case when the second person isn't physically there.

"When someone is on the phone with you, they have no idea what’s going on in front of you," Miller added. "That’s just plain dangerous for drivers and anyone around them."

So, why do we want to do it so badly? Well, we're biologically wired to multitask. We've actually been multitasking since we were cavepeople, Earl Miller, professor of neuroscience at MIT told me. Back then, this was a good thing because "there weren't many sources of information, but what was there was crucial," he said. "A rustling in the bushes could mean a tiger was about to jump out at us. New information like that could be critically important for our lives."



Our singleminded brain (Miller's words, not mine) still craves all that information, but our brains haven’t evolved to deal with the incredible number of sources of it in out information-rich society. And even if we know deep down that switch-tasking is bad, our brains are extremely good at deluding themselves. "The brain rationalizes, it makes you think you’re good at something, even when you're not," Miller said.