For Pilots, Managing Attention Is Life and Death. Here's How They Do It.

Flying a plane requires not only physical skills but also psychological aspects, including managing attention and multitasking in a complex system where mistakes can be fatal. Pilots learn to prioritize attention as a limited resource, similar to money in a bank account, and must manage their focus on various tasks to avoid errors. Airplane cockpits are designed to reduce pilots' cognitive workload by minimizing the potential for mismanaged attention, mirroring principles that can be applied to other industries and roles to minimize cognitive load for users. Key strategies include maximizing signal-to-noise ratio and relying on patterns of behavior users already know and understand.