I'm a big fan of productivity and efficiency. And that should appeal to all of us. If we can get a similar result with less effort or a better result with the same effort, than we should do this. In the business world we've learned, in some cases the hard way, that multi-tasking doesn't work. We can't carry on a conversation with someone while replying to emails. We may miss part of what is being said to us or we make a typo or grammatical error in our reply. When someone matters we should eliminate distractions and focus on what we're doing. For example, I can remember back in school and studying for exams. Some people would listen to music. This approach never worked for me as part of the brain is paying attention to the lyrics and melody. And I didn't want to give up this fraction of my attention to anything other than preparing for the exam. When what we're doing doesn't really matter we may be able to get away with doing two or more things at once. This might be something like folding laundry and watching a show. You can probably do both at the same time without too much difficulty. So what about training? Where do we draw the line in terms of multitasking or including a distraction in the training process? With moderate intensity exercise listening to music has been known to lessen perceived exertion (1). The music serves as a distraction and helps the exercise feel less hard than it would normally. Usually the type of exercise done in these studies is steady state aerobic exercise like riding a stationary bike. There's not much to think about and you can even your close your eyes and go for it. The same wouldn't apply to...