For anyone weary of how much smart phones and social media have hijacked your attention, Attention Span by Gloria Mark is an eye-opening book. She also has YouTube videos on attention to get a sense of her style.
One big takeaway from the book is that - yes - our attention spans have shrunk (obviously). Also intuitive is that we need little breaks from focus in order to restore our cognitive resources. We may be able to get into flow occasionally, especially with creative pursuits, but we have to build our focus muscle to get there. And the more we need to tune out distractions, the more resources we expend and the more we need to rest.
But one particularly surprising part of the book was her discussion on how easy cognitive tasks actually can help restore our attention. I strongly believed playing Candy Crush on my phone would waste attentional resources on a meaningless task when in fact it can enhance it in the right dose. The difficulty is how addictive YouTube, games, email, and social media can be where we spend much more time than we anticipated on these breaks.
Perhaps rather than swearing away all distracting activities, choosing intentional breaks for our attention muscles on mindless tasks we enjoy can result in greater focus. I would be curious to hear your experiences and thoughts about what helps you stay focused!
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