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Have you ever tried to focus on writing an e-mail and instead you pick up your phone to mindlessly scroll through social media? Or do you miss the days you were a voracious reader and now can’t sit still for long enough to enjoy a good book?
If that resonates with you, you’re not alone. This feeling of constant distractibility is what Johann Hari, a U.K.-based journalist and author of Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again, calls an “attention crisis,” which he believes is a societal problem.
“Focus is our superpower,” he says, and when your ability to pay attention deteriorates, so does your capacity to achieve. “You feel worse about yourself because you actually are less competent.”
It’s tempting to declare that in this age of smartphones and social media, our attention spans have shortened. Studies show that in 2004, people spent an average of two and a half minutes on a screen before switching to another window or app. That amount of time has shortened to 47 seconds, according to research by California-based informatics professor Gloria Mark, author of Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity.
But brain researchers are divided on whether our actual cognitive capabilities have shrunk or if our attention is much more divided than it once was, because of information overload, says Faria Sana, a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Athabasca University.
With more research to be done, it’s hard to prove the former, but the latter is still concerning. When attention is divided, information is less likely to be encoded and stored effectively in your brain for later, says Sana: ”So, if you’re having trouble focusing, you’re also going to have trouble retrieving the information later.”
What can you do about your propensity to lose focus? Here are some research-backed tips to help you be a little less prone to distraction.
Focus on one thing at a time
While many people may think they are great at multitasking, a breadth of research shows that you’re not in fact doing two things at once; you’re actually quickly switching between tasks and often not doing either to the best of your ability. That is because multitasking incurs a “switch cost,” as cognitive scientists call it. Sana explains that rapidly switching between tasks “leaves this residue of attention on the previous task and reduces our ability to concentrate fully on the current task.”
Mark recommends single-tasking, or working on one task ideally through to completion. “If you do have to switch, switch at a breakpoint in the task,” she says. “If you’re reading a book, stop at the end of the chapter, stop at the end of a section. Don’t stop in the middle.”
Limit distractions
Humans are evolutionarily inclined to seek novelty, says Sana. It helped us survive in the past by keeping us aware of new things in our environment. But now, phone notifications, news alerts, flashing images on TV – “It’s all novelty,” she says. And giving in to these distractions while trying to focus has a lasting effect. Research shows that getting back on task after an interruption often results in errors, especially if it lasts longer than 15 seconds.
Just ignoring your phone on your desk might not be enough, either. A 2017 study published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research found that just the presence of one’s own smartphone negatively affected the participants’ attention, even when they didn’t interact with the device. The best thing to do when trying to focus is to create a distraction-free environment and leave your phone in another room, says Sana. Or, as University of Waterloo psychology professor and attention researcher Daniel Smilek suggests, create friction between you and the distraction, such as applying a password for certain apps.
Hari goes one step further. He swears by the K Safe – a plastic box which you can set to lock away your phone until a certain time.
Try mindfulness meditation
Mindfulness meditation usually involves focusing on a bodily sensation and refocusing on that feeling as distractions arise. This particular type of meditation “involves training people how to pay attention, and attention is the very thing that gets hijacked when we’re distracted,” says Zindel Segal, a professor of psychology in mood disorders at the University of Toronto. This habit of redirecting focus to where you want it to go can be very helpful “when you find yourself distracted or your mind pulled away in 100 different directions,” he says. A 2018 study in Frontiers in Neuroscience found that the task performance and attentional control of subjects with little to no meditation experience improved after a brief 10-minute mindfulness exercise.
Take breaks
Our attention is a finite cognitive resource. Research suggests that taking breaks helps replenish attention abilities. If you feel yourself getting distracted, Mark says to ask yourself if you really just need a break. “When we start to get mentally fatigued, we open ourselves up for distraction,” says Mark, who recommends going outside for a walk to destress or give your mind a rest.
A 2018 study from researchers at McMaster University found that exercise breaks, specifically, increased the on-task attention of undergraduate students. If getting sweaty to stay on task doesn’t sound appealing to you, Mark suggests doing a rote activity to relax your brain and restore attentional resources, something simple and easy that feels rewarding. That could mean gardening, knitting or doing a crossword, for example.
Connect to your motivation
Smilek says that one of the key ways to promote sustained attention on tasks is to improve motivation. In his lab, that means offering a monetary prize or allowing subjects to leave early if they completed a task well or within a timeframe. Smilek also says that inattention increases if the task at hand is too simple or monotonous. Applying this in practice could mean giving yourself a reward for completing a task, or finding the right amount of challenge in whatever it is you’re doing.
Keeping motivation in mind is something Mark noticed in her research, too. If you have a goal for what you want to achieve – and how you want to feel at the end of the day – write it down and keep it front and centre on a Post-it note, she says. Hari does something similar – when he feels distracted, he steps back and asks himself why he’s doing what he’s doing. “When you reconnect with the meaning,” he says, “it’s a very powerful way to get yourself back to refocusing on the work.”
What are you doing about your attention span?
Do you find it hard to stay focused while writing an email, reading a book or watching a long movie? You're not alone – Johann Hari, a U.K.-based journalist and author, calls that feeling of constant distractibility an “attention crisis," and it's affecting many of us. Have you come up with any ways to counter the challenge? Do you limit your screen time? Have a go-to playlist to stay focused? Leave your phone in another room at home? The Globe wants to know if you have any tried-and-true tips. Share them in the box below, or send us an email to audience@globeandmail.com.