You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

by Kate Murphy

People haven’t made their homes refuges of quiet either. Televisions are almost always on with the drone of cable news, reruns, looping weather reports, or cooking shows. Most people now also have some form of sound system, even if it’s just a small, portable speaker plugged into an iPhone. Streaming services like Apple Music, Pandora, and Spotify have allowed even those without large music collections to have constant ambient music—excellent for setting a mood but a distraction if you want to listen closely to a family member or friend. While you may think you can tune out these kinds of things, research consistently shows that you cannot. The ability to multitask is a delusion. Each input degrades your attention. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman memorably wrote, “The often used phrase ‘pay attention’ is apt: you dispose of a limited budget of attention that you can allocate to activities, and if you try to go beyond your budget, you will fail.”