You are likely reading this story on a screen. I have 47 seconds of your focus before you are likely distracted by something else, according to research on the average attention span.
Let’s make the most of it.
Attention is on the decline. Blame an increase in digital technology, algorithms encouraging people to keep swiping onto the next thing, and increasingly blurry boundaries between work and personal time. The amount of time the average person can spend on a screen has decreased from 2 ½ minutes to 47 seconds over the past 20 years, according to research by Dr. Gloria Mark, chancellor’s professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine.
It can be harder to make the most of your work and personal time with a lower attention span, Mark said. While we may be too far down the technological road to reverse the trend completely, you still can make changes to increase your attention span.
Reading up to this point was probably about 47 seconds. Did you stay focused? Think you can continue?
Keep going to test how far you can push yourself and learn more about how to take charge of your focus again.
Go ahead — challenge yourself and try to keep focused with your social media pages open on the other tabs.
Training our brains not to pay attention
Once upon a time, families would write letters or read for hours after dinner. Then, they turned to watching a movie or program on TV. Maybe someone would call on a landline. Lately, even movie night often gets interrupted by a quick phone scroll.
That distractibility isn’t because people are uninterested in traditional forms of media or the company they keep — often our brains are trained to be distracted, Mark said.
Dopamine, often called the “feel-good” neurotransmitter, plays a part in intense drives such as motivation, reward and addiction. You can get a dopamine hit from many things, including those that are good for you, such as exercise and time spent with loved ones, said Dr. Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine.
But having social media in the palm of your hand sets the dopamine bar incredibly high.
Instead of making plans to see a friend, you can get plugged into five different conversations with your favorites all at once. That unending feed gives the illusion something is always going on that you are missing out on.
And instead of sitting through a movie or TV show, with some slow parts, you now have an endless stream of funny, shocking or emotionally charged short clips at your fingertips. And if one gets boring, you can just scroll on —something better is likely on the feed.
“The catastrophic effect of having an endless feed, where there’s always more content to evaluate, is now you have trouble interacting with anything that doesn’t supply instant gratification,” said Dr. Marian Berryhill, professor and associate chair of the psychology department at the University of Nevada, Reno.
There have also been changes in the workplace.
Instead of a nine-to-five job in which you leave the office and the day ends, now employees are expected to be available at all hours, and they may need to respond to instant messages or emails from work.
With that ease of access, your brain knows those notification sounds can interrupt at any time, so it stays prepared to be distracted, Mark said.
Now we’re at about double the amount of average reading time we can expect. How are you feeling? Did you hear the call of phone alerts or feel tempted to scroll social media?
Whether you stayed focused or not, let’s try again.
A vicious cycle of procrastination
Attention isn’t an unending resource. You can’t will yourself to get more of it when you are feeling depleted, and powering through isn’t the answer, Mark said.
Stress and energy levels have a big impact on how focused you can be. At different times of the day, you have more or less attention available to give, she said.
When people don’t know how to optimize their attention span, they often don’t get the amount of work (professional or personal) done in a day that they would like to, Mark said. As a result, work seeps into time with friends and family or hobbies.
A break from work is necessary for your well-being. Working on hobbies, socializing or stepping away for a few minutes is crucial to recharge the attention stores, she added.
Bringing a report home to finish in the evening can leave you less focused the next day and make your next assignment take longer. Then you end up working later on that one, too, and the cycle continues.
One strategy to get focused
One way to cut that cycle off is to visualize the end of your day, Mark said.
Do you want to procrastinate now and spend the evening stressed and cramming in your to-do items? Or would you rather close out the day by relaxing, spending time with loved ones and doing something fun, knowing that you are all set for tomorrow?
Asking yourself about how you want the end of the day to feel can improve your motivation if you’re low on energy, Mark said.
When you are short on attention, it’s easy to think that you just need to look up lyrics to the song playing in your head or check flight prices on a dream vacation and then you can get back to home finances or a work report.
But chances are such a brief detour won’t be so quick. On average, people take about 25 minutes to refocus on a work task after a distraction arises, Mark said.
There is a mental trick for that, too. It’s called meta-awareness, and all it takes is being aware enough to catch your impulse to divert before acting on it. You can ask yourself, “Do I really need to do this right now?”
Maybe the answer is yes — it’s a worthwhile distraction. Oftentimes, the answer will be no. Either way, you are retraining your brain not to follow every possible deviation but to evaluate and take control of how you are allotting your attention, Mark said.
The section you just completed was about 2 ½ minutes of reading time, so if you made it all the way without distraction, you have maintained the average attention span of someone 20 years ago. Congratulations! If not, or if it was harder than expected, it’s OK. Keep reading to learn more about how to get better.
Setting up your schedule to make the most of the day
Night owl? Early bird? Neither? People have chronotypes, or times of the day when they have more energy and attention and those when they have less, Mark said.
For most people, a spike in attention span occurs midmorning and then right after lunch, but it varies by person, she added.
Attention can be directed or involuntary. The first is when you choose to give something your focus –– such as doing a work assignment or filing your taxes –– while involuntary is triggered when something inherently interesting to your brain captures you, said Dr. Marc Berman, professor of psychology and director of the Environmental Neuroscience Lab at the University of Chicago.
Those inherently interesting things could be exciting lights, sounds or the smell of a fresh baked brownie. Your involuntary attention doesn’t get tired, but your directed attention does, he added.
If you aren’t aware of your own peaks and valleys in attention, you may attend to lighter-lift tasks, such as replying to texts or emails, during those precious peaks in attention and then shoehorning things that demand more brain power when you are feeling sluggish, Mark said.
Can you set up your day to make the most of when you get things done? Doing so could mean being mindful of when you schedule easy check-in meetings so that you don’t lose the prime post-lunch burst for problem-solving or save your email replies for a slump before lunch or at the end of the day, she said.
Be productive by not working
You may be a workhorse with great self-control who can toil for hours and not feel the need to take a break. Nevertheless, you need to be more intentional about taking breaks to increase your ability to continue working well, Mark said.
The ideal is to take a break before you really need one –– are you rereading words? Feeling like you aren’t retaining information?
Scheduling breaks can help. Take a quick one at a natural stopping point between tasks, Mark said. In those five minutes or so of rest, do something that isn’t cognitively difficult, such as taking a quick walk or sorting through your desk drawer.
But longer breaks can be important, too. Try making the most of your lunchtime.
Some of the most replenishing activities include being social, going outside and getting moving, Mark said.
Being in nature is particularly helpful, because it can replenish directed attention through softly fascinating stimulus, Berman said. For example, staring at a beautiful waterfall is interesting and engaging, and it gives your mind the time and space to wander, which can be replenishing to attention, he added.
On the other hand, in a busy urban environment such as New York’s Times Square, the noise and movement keep you engaged no matter what, and you have to pay attention to make sure you don’t bump into people or oncoming traffic. That can be mentally exhausting.
When Mark worked in Germany, she and her colleagues would leave their desks every day to have lunch together. They would chat and enjoy one another’s company, and then they would take a walk. Such leisurely time contrasted starkly with her return to the United States, where she found herself squeezing in some food while working from her desk, she said.
Not all workplaces or chaotic home lives encourage a restful lunch break such as the ones Mark experienced in Germany, but advocating for time to recharge and make little steps toward relaxation is a big investment toward your productivity and attention span, she said.
Berman recommends taking a nature break when you are in a place of mental fatigue. Don’t listen to your favorite podcast or get engrossed in conversation. And go outside even if the forecast isn’t good. You don’t have to enjoy the weather to get the benefits, he said.
Since our last check-in, I gave you about another 2 ½ minutes’ worth of reading. Did you stay engaged? If not, maybe you are getting caught up in a fast-paced, scroll-centric world. It might be time to try to retrain your attention span.
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