“You’re reading a book called Attention Span? Is this some kind of joke?”
In her book “Attention Span“, Gloria Mark explores the impacts of today’s fast-paced technology on our attention spans, productivity, and happiness. She presents a lot of research done both by her own and other teams. Based on that, she offers advice, not only on how to gain more control over our attention, but also on finding balance between productivity and happiness.
Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity by Gloria Mark (2023). [1]
Here are just a few of the findings and insights I found helpful.
Fun facts about attention and productivity
Have our attention spans really decreased?
Maybe you are feeling it yourself? Or maybe you’ve heard humans’ attention spans compared unfavorably to those of goldfish? Well that was a bit unfair. But is it true it that we are switching our attention more often these days than we used to? As it turns out, indeed we are.
Mark reports dramatic findings from her own as well as other people’s research [1], spanning from the early 2000’s to now. In the early years they shadowed people with stop watches. Later, they used computer logging methods to record precisely how long people’s attention remained on one screen, and when they switched their screens, apps, or websites. The measured average time people spent before switching went down steadily from about two and a half minutes in their earliest studies in 2004, to less than fifty seconds in 2021.
Another change that happened along with attention spans shortening is that people were spending more time at their desks and less time in formal and informal meetings. With that, people were becoming more sedentary during their work hours. (That decline already happened pre-pandemic, when most meetings were in person.)
The three high costs of rapid attention switching
Multitasking has rightfully earned a bad rap. Because our attention cannot be divided into more than one focus, we cannot truly to two things in parallel, unless one or both of the activities require little or no attentional resources. For example, listening to an audiobook while cooking is possible if I cook something that requires minimal thinking. If I’m trying to read and follow a new recipe, I’m quickly going to lose the plot in the audiobook. Similarly, I may be able to speak on the phone while painting, but not while responding to incoming texts or emails. Even if it feels like I’m doing both things at the same time, what I am really doing is switching my attention rapidly between them.
There are three problems with rapid attention switching. All three have been well documented over decades of research:
- We make more errors. Whether the switching is voluntary or not, our performance on each task is worse when we switch between them, compared to when we first complete one and then the other.
- It takes us longer to complete both tasks (again compared to first completing one, then the other).
- It increases stress. Diastolic and systolic blood pressure rises, and heart rate variability increases. Those physical markers are consistent with people’s subjective experience. The faster the switching, the more stressed people report feeling.
How can we improve our attention span and productivity?
What NOT to do:
1. Don’t try to focus as long as possible
Mark aims to dispel several myths in her book. The first myth is that we should try to focus as long as possible in order to be most productive.
It turns out that focusing for lengthy periods of time, especially without breaks, is not natural for most people. Just as we are not able to lift weights all day, we can’t stay focused for long stretches throughout the day without breaks. Sustained focus is associated with stress and can only be maintained for a limited time before our performance begins to decline.
There is a physiological basis in the brain that underlies this. When we focus our attention, the regions of the brain that are involved in that task use more oxygen, and accordingly the carbon dioxide content in the blood increases. This causes blood vessels to dilate to remove that waste from the activated part of the brain. Over time, blood velocity decreases as a consequence. When that happens, and the person remains in that sustained focused state, their performance declines. This change in performance that accompanies decreased blood velocity suggests that cognitive resources are not being replenished fast enough while the task continues. [1]
In other words, our brains hit a physical, metabolic limit, and we need breaks. This leads to another recommendation:
2. Don’t try to eliminate all rote, mindless activities
In line with this, Mark challenges the myth that rote, mindless activities have no value. There is no need to cut out all mindless activity like playing silly puzzle games, browsing the web, watching movies, or other easy and non-productive things.
Mark on the contrary suggests that since our attention is limited, it makes sense to pull away when we feel that we have exhausted our cognitive resources. Letting our minds wander while taking breaks with easy tasks, both online and in the physical world, helps us replenish our scarce cognitive resources. With more resources, we are better able to then focus again and be productive.
3. Don’t feel bad if you can’t get into a flow state at work
Another myth that Mark challenges is that we should all be able to get into “flow states” at work.
Flow, a term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is that optimal state of attention where we are so caught up in an experience that we lose touch with the outside world and are unaware that time has passed. We feel joy and excitement, and are at our utmost creative peak. [1]
While people often have flow experiences with creative pursuits such as art, music, craft, design, or also in problem-solving tasks such as coding, Mark and her collaborators found that it rarely occurs in the knowledge workplace. Much of the nature of knowledge work is just not conducive to this kind of creative experience. This doesn’t mean we’re doing something wrong.
What can we do instead to improve our attention span, productivity, and happiness?
Instead of falling for these myths, Mark suggests we aim for balance and well-being by finding a good rhythm for our attention and productivity.
1. Designing your day:
Design your day based on your own rhythm of attention, knowing that you have peak times for focus. Take advantage of these. Most people have peak focus times around 11 a.m. and midafternoon, but your own peak focus may differ from that. Save your hardest tasks for your peak hours.
When designing your day, recognize the value of “negative space”. In art, negative space refers to the area around a figure and is recognized as an essential part of the art work. In Japanese, the term “yohaku no bi” refers to the beauty of empty space. Design your day to include negative space, which is just as important as the work itself because it helps you achieve a sustainable balance.
2. Coping with external interruptions
Having control over interruptions helps people be more productive.
A good time to intentionally redirect your attention is when you reach a break point in a task, such as finishing writing a chapter or completing a budget—natural places to pause.
It that’s not possible and you do need to interrupt a task: externalize your memory of that unfinished task. For example, write a note about your most important unfinished tasks and a plan for the next step. Mark cites a study by Michael Scullin and colleagues, who found that people who wrote down their unfinished tasks fell asleep significantly faster than the other group. In fact, the more detailed their notes, the faster people fell asleep. [1] This finding can be explained by the Zeigarnik effect: as people lay in bed, unfinished tasks agitated around and around in their minds, stirring up tension.
3. Coping with internal interruptions
It is important to acknowledge that interruptions to our attention can be external as well as internal. We tend to self-interrupt, even when there are no outside triggers that would prompt us to switch attention.
Practice meta-awareness (awareness of your awareness). This means being conscious of what you are experiencing while it is unfolding, for example of the moment you choose to switch screens from work to opening your news browser.
Once you have that awareness, you can ask yourself: what value will I gain by interrupting my work and checking the news? If you’re already on the news site by the time you reach that meta-awareness, you can ask: How much time have I spent here already? Am I gaining any value by staying here? When you have meta-awareness, you can switch your frame of mind from being a passive to an active user of your attention.
Developing the ability to use meta-awareness takes practice. The better able you are to gain a meta-awareness of your behavior, the more intentional you can be in your actions.
Practice forethought by imagining how your current actions might affect your future. For example, before you go on social media or play an online game, spend a moment to think ahead and imagine what your end of the morning might look like if you indulge. The more detailed your visualization is, the easier it is to take an action to course-correct if you need to.
Increase friction: make it harder for your attention to switch. For example, if you know that you like to play a certain game, hide the app in a folder so that it’s harder to get to. Having to search for it will make you pause and increase the chances you’ll become aware and get the chance to make a conscious choice.
Best practices for organizations: increasing employees’ attention spans and productivity
Finally, some changes can only be accomplished on an organizational level. Two recommendations stood out to me in particular:
- Reducing email
- Designating quiet time, where responses are not expected
It took Gloria Mark six years to find a company that was willing to cut off email for a full work week as an experiment. When email was cut off, heart rate monitors revealed significantly less stress by the end of the week, and more enjoyment of social interactions. What’s more, people’s attention spans were significantly longer while working on their computers. In other words, they switched their attention less frequently. With the caveat that this was a quasi-experiment in the field, rather than a randomized controlled study, this finding nonetheless offers plausible evidence that email may cause attention spans to decline.
Based on her findings, Mark suggests cutting off email as a no-brainer. However, individuals alone cannot solve the email problem by simply cutting off from it. Email is a problem that needs to be tackled at the organizational and even societal level.
Disappointingly (and surprisingly to me) Mark found that batching email does not help. People who read email in batches showed no difference in stress levels compared to people who checked their email continually. In fact, batching even led to more stress, rather than less, for highly neurotic people. However, simply decreasing quantity helped. People who spent less time daily on email were less stressed—even after controlling for their job demands and job autonomy.
Final note
What I presented here is not meant to be a book summary. I selected only a few insights I gained from the book, and gave my notes a different structure than the book did. I hope you find some of it memorable and applicable.
If you would like to discuss how you or your organization could put some of these suggestions into practice, please let me know.
by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR
Picture Credits:
Image created with the assistance of OpenAI DALL-E and Microsoft Designer
Reference:
[1] Mark, G. (2023). Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity. Hanover Square Press.
Note: Gloria Mark cites many studies in her book, some of which I mentioned here. I have not read those original studies and am therefore not listing them as direct references for this post.
Here’s a sketch to illustrate an additional problem. The blue and green areas show brain activity that is specific to certain tasks, whereas the orange area shows roughly what extra brain activity is required just for the switching between those two specific tasks. The point of the sketch is to show how the switching itself is actually a third task that consumes a lot of brainpower. Importantly,
Unfortunately, the answer is many times yes. In my research into the topic, I’ve found at least eight ways how a lack of sleep affects different aspects of our judgment and decision making.
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