Many of the most impressive tricks are little more than an illusion.
A common example would be juggling three balls.
When people see those balls whirling overhead, they are often amazed at how one person can keep all three balls in the air at once.
The trick is: you don’t.
As soon as you look carefully, it’s plain to see that only one ball is in the air at a time. And only one ball is being caught at a time. That makes things a lot easier on the juggler.
Even if we throw all three at the same time, or give them four or five or seven balls, the juggler still only ever catches one ball at a time.
They’re constantly switching their attention from one ball to the next, which takes an incredible amount of energy focus.
No matter how good we get at switching our focus, we’ll never be able to multitask.
We’re either focused on doing one thing well or lots of things badly.