Everyone at work that uses a company vehicle was recently forced to take a “Distracted Driving” course. The prevailing “expert” opinion is that we can’t simultaneously carry out tasks or do things. Rather, we divide our attention into “micro-slices” and shift back and forth from task to task in these slices of focus.
Since the human mind can’t carry out multiple instructions simultaneously, we aren’t technically multitasking. I call bullspit - that the course involved semantically hair-splitting exercises, but I was able to answer the questions on their test to their satisfaction.
I think that to say the body can’t multitask is painting with an awfully broad brush, I mean the body doesn’t even really “sleep”. We’re talking about attentional multi tasking here, and even that is probably too broad when it comes to highly learned, overpractised behaviors like driving or playing music. But I think there is something to it. Working on ten tasks at ones is attentionally fatiguing, and I try to reduce that as much as I can.