Once upon a time, I was driving along and allowed myself to be distracted. I took my eyes off of the road and got into my most severe driving accident. No doubt it was my fault, and responsibility, as it is the responsibility of the driver to keep their eyes, and other senses, on what is going on outside the car -- the road, the people, deer, and so forth. But, even more so than before that accident, I became hyper aware of people going one direction while their attention is going another direction.
In my situation, this only happened for a few seconds -- but that was too long. How many times have you watched a scene in a movie where the driver turns their attention away from the road and talks with their passenger for ten seconds, twenty seconds, maybe thirty seconds without ever looking back at the road? We all know that that just isn't real -- people can NOT do that without severe, perhaps fatal, problems. But, that's just part of the movie offset from reality. It's very similar to the fact that restroom breaks never seem to happen even though we know they must.
This is the phenomenon behind the greatly increased accident, and fatality, rates of people who text or use a phone hands-on while driving. Driving a 3000 lb. moving object requires focused attention. Any distraction must be kept firmly in the background. In computer science jargon, they must be kept as low priority interrupts. AFTER all necessary items, needed for safe driving, have received attention then some time and attention can be diverted elsewhere.
This doesn't happen only while driving, of course, though it is thankful that it is rarely fatal or even very serious when not driving. How many people have run into you when they are walking while looking over to the right or left while still walking forward? Perhaps you have even done such. Except when you are crossing the street while doing this, it is usually not too dangerous -- but still can be awkward and embarrassing.
This also happens within the business world. The business plan has us working towards a particular objective and that objective has specific needs to be handled in a timely way. How often does something else divert us and has us continuing on automatic concerning what we have chosen to be our most pressing focus? Much more often than we would like to acknowledge. We "walk" one direction while looking elsewhere. Note that this is different than recognizing an emergency or a needed change of direction -- it is a matter of not paying attention to the "most important now" task.
And the longer that attention is diverted from the "most important now" tasks, the more likely there will be problems. Perhaps even fatal ones.
