The official brain syndrome of our age earlier on this blog focused on how the human brain can get overloaded and the undesirable results of that.

Why can't you pay attention anymore? takes it a bit further with an interview with ADD expert Edward Hallowell, author and psychiatrist. In this interview, Hallowell talks about something different from ADD, a work overload that ain't any good for you either. Hallowell makes a distinction between this and ADD:

In ADD--the true ADD--it doesn't go away, wherever you go. So I realized that these people were having it induced by their work world. When they got to work, then symptoms would start to occur. So that meant that something was going on at work. That something is this overload.

He also put a different slant on the idea of multitasking: mainly, there's no such thing:

No one really multitasks. You just spend less time on any one thing. When it looks like you're multitasking--you're looking at one TV screen and another TV screen and you're talking on the telephone--your attention has to shift from one to the other. You're brain literally can't multitask. You can't pay attention to two things simultaneously. You're switching back and forth between the two. So you're paying less concerted attention to either one.

Overall, an interesting read - if you're paying attention.