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Let’s start with some facts:
- Seventy-percent of people say they have a problem paying attention.
- The average attention span is eight seconds. After reading this sentence, it’s likely that you’re going to start thinking about something else, glance at the sidebar, or wonder what the dog is doing in the kitchen. And those ads in the background? They are designed to pull your mind away from focused reading.
- Although we know there is no such thing as ‘multi-tasking’—we are really letting our minds flit quickly between tasks—you may be reading this with the radio in the background, music playing, or your phone pinging.
When we are stressed, tired, or anxious, we become even more distracted. Intrusive thoughts working in the background keep pushing to the fore, pulling us away from what is supposed to be the primary focus of our attention.
Distraction Is Functional
Although pundits decry our lack of attention, blaming recent technological changes like phones, the truth is, maintaining focused attention has never been easy.
Distraction, is, after all, highly functional. We have evolved to be alert to danger; only in specific protected environments were humans at leisure to focus completely on a single task. We alert to any change in our environment. Ever wonder why TV ads are louder than the shows? Or why ads now frequently include phone alerts? It’s because it makes us look.
Developmental psychologists measure newborns’ ability to see new colors or understand numbers by their attention to novelty. Show a baby cards with four cats, four butterflies, four squares, four circles until they are bored and start to look around. Now show them a card with five cats. Their eyes snap to the picture. Why? Because novelty distracts them and captures their attention. Scientists use their attraction to novelty to learn when infants can tell that four and five are different—when babies understand numbers. Attention to novelty—distraction—is our natural state. For our ancestors, missing that rustle in the bush might cost us – or make us – a meal.
Attention is Hard
In the book Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It, professor James Lang makes a compelling argument that we have been thinking about attention all wrong. Teachers, in particular, seem to assume that students’ natural state is to pay attention in class. It’s not. Distraction is our natural state. And has been, he argues, for millennia before we invented cell phones.
He cites Aristotle in Ethics saying that distraction comes about between the clash between things that are more pleasurable and things that are less pleasurable. “People who are passionately devoted to the flute are unable to pay attention to arguments if they hear someone playing a flute, since they enjoy the flute-playing more than the activity that presently occupies them,” he writes. (Texting with friends v. listening to algebra instruction provides a similar contrast.)
In Confessions, Augustine of Hippo laments being distracted by a lizard catching a fly or a spider when he should be working and how his prayer is “broken off by the inroads of I know not what idle thoughts.” In other words, even our most revered classical scholars were distracted from their profound thoughts. They managed to create great works anyway.
The guts of Lang’s argument can be summarized as attention is hard. It requires active effort to maintain. This has important implications:
- We tend to assume attention is natural and distraction is evidence of some kind of lack. This is wrong. We should be thinking of distraction as the natural state, and attention as an effortful achievement.
- Achieving attention requires structuring our environment to engage our attention and engaging in practices that make attention easier to attain.
How to Pay Attention
Lang argues that classrooms and other learning and work activities should be structured in short bursts because 1) novelty gains our attention, and 2) attention will quickly be lost. Thus, he argues that teachers should frontload activities where we really have to focus, and follow up with activities that are less effortful because no one can pay attention for very long.
Evita Singh developed a technique called Take FIVE that recognizes our short attention spans and helps us accommodate ourselves to it.
She says we should:
- T – Take frequent breaks.
- A – Actively engage in the one task at hand.
- K – Keep distractions to a minimum.
- E – Eliminate multitasking.
- Five – Take five minutes to refocus.
Attention Essential Reads
In other words, recognize that attention is hard. Work on focusing and set up your environment to make it easier. Work in short bursts. Take breaks where you let your mind wander—take a “body break,” do that puzzle, check those texts. Just make sure the “break” isn’t longer than the time you’ve set aside for tasks.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
Like any skill, attention gets better with practice. I see this myself when learning to meditate. I use a headset that reads my brain waves to help me learn how to calm my thoughts. This type of meditation requires active, focused attention. I get sound feedback telling me how successful I’m being at staying focused and maintaining a relaxed “alpha wave” state. It’s hard.
When I first started using the app, one minute of focused attention felt like a lot. It was much easier for me to do three one-minute sessions than one three-minute one. But, as I practiced, the longer sessions became easier and easier to attain.
I find the same thing at work. I set up an environment that’s pretty focused. I help my mind and body to know it’s time to pay attention through rituals (a very well-known work playlist that I associate with attention, a closed door, and setting a timer). When my mind starts to wander, I refocus my attentional efforts until my timer says I can break. And then I do.
Attention is hard. It can also be wonderfully joyful. We should set ourselves up to develop the skill and stop beating ourselves up because we think it should come naturally.
