Takes someone's attention away from what they're focused on by drawing it to something else.
From Latin 'distrahere': 'dis-' (apart) + 'trahere' (to pull or draw). The word emerged in the 1500s meaning literally to pull in different directions, then evolved to mean pulling attention in multiple directions.
Your brain can only fully focus on one complex task at a time—when something distracts you, it's literally pulling your neural resources away from your main task, which is why multitasking is mostly a myth!
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