The Art of Manliness - Get a Handle on Your Shrinking Attention Span

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.200 20 years ago, it didn't seem like a burdensome task to write a handwritten letter to a loved

00:00:15.180 one. 15 years ago, it wasn't a big deal to write a long email to a friend. Today, it

00:00:20.460 can feel hard to motivate yourself to tap out a two-line response to a text. The feeling

00:00:24.560 that your attention span has been shrieking over time isn't just in your head. Research

00:00:28.420 by today's guests shows that it is empirically getting shorter and shorter. Dr. Gloria Mark

00:00:33.040 is the world's preeminent researcher on attention and the author of Attention Span. If you'd

00:00:37.300 like to get a handle on your diminishing powers of concentration, you have to understand how

00:00:40.920 attention works. And that's what Gloria explains in the first part of our conversation. We

00:00:45.220 then get into how multitasking is like drawing on and wiping off a whiteboard and why it

00:00:49.720 makes us feel so frazzled. Gloria then shares the way that personality influences your attention 1.00

00:00:53.800 span, including why people who are more neurotic have the shortest attention spans and why

00:00:58.260 conscientious people may not want to use distraction blocking apps. We then get into how the internet

00:01:03.320 and the shot lengths of modern movies reinforce our short attention spans. In the last part

00:01:07.720 of our conversation, Gloria makes the case that fighting the hindrances to our attention 0.87

00:01:11.620 by trying to be focused all the time isn't possible or desirable, and that our goal should

00:01:16.040 be balanced focus rather than hyper focus. She explains how to achieve that balanced focus

00:01:20.740 by leaning into your unique productivity rhythm, taking breaks without guilt, and developing

00:01:25.280 a sense of agency over your attention. Add if the show is over, check out our show notes

00:01:29.280 at awim.is slash attention.

00:01:42.840 All right, Gloria, Mark, welcome to the show.

00:01:49.860 Thank you so much.

00:01:50.900 So you are a psychologist and you've spent your career researching and writing about the

00:01:56.740 impact of our digital devices on our lives, particularly our attention. And you got a new

00:02:01.500 book out called Attention Span, a groundbreaking way to restore balance, happiness, and productivity.

00:02:06.640 And what you've done is you've taken the research you've done for your entire career and synthesized

00:02:10.900 it and presented it in a very readable fashion for a lay audience on how we can help improve

00:02:15.940 our attention. Because I know a lot of people are concerned about it. So let's start off with

00:02:20.180 some statistics you've uncovered in your research. What's the state of our attention spans these

00:02:24.980 days?

00:02:25.980 So let me start off by saying I began studying this back in 2004 and I used empirical methods.

00:02:34.260 At the time, we would use stopwatches and we would shadow people. We would time every time they

00:02:41.860 switch screens so we could try to get as precise as possible the amount of time they were on a screen.

00:02:47.880 Back in 2004, we found an average of two and a half minutes. Over the years, we continued 0.77

00:02:55.000 measuring this. Computer logging techniques were developed, very sophisticated, and we switched

00:03:02.220 to using those. And in the last five or six years, we find attention spans on any screen to reach a steady

00:03:11.740 state averaging about 47 seconds. And others have also replicated these results within a few seconds.

00:03:19.820 So yes, our attention on a screen is short. If you look at the midpoint, the midpoint is called the

00:03:26.780 median. That's 40 seconds. That means half of all the observations we found were 40 seconds or less on any screen.

00:03:35.740 So we went from being able to focus for two minutes on something on a screen before switching to

00:03:40.460 something else to only being able to stay with the same thing for 47 seconds.

00:03:44.700 Yes, yes.

00:03:45.980 That's like a 50% drop, more than a 50% drop.

00:03:50.420 Yeah, yeah. It definitely has shortened.

00:03:54.220 And besides our attention spans shortening, so the amount of times we focus on a screen or

00:03:59.260 something on a screen, we're also spending more time with our digital devices. How much time are we

00:04:04.380 spending with our smartphones, computers, TVs now?

00:04:08.220 Yeah, so Americans spend about 10 hours a day on some screen. And this is whether it's their phones

00:04:16.140 or computers, TV screens. So, you know, we spend a good chunk of our waking hours on some kind of screen.

00:04:24.660 Okay. So, and I think a lot of people, they wish they could have more attention and they probably

00:04:28.580 recognize this. And what I hope we can do in this conversation is highlight how our attention works.

00:04:33.940 And by understanding how our attention works, how this constant switching from different things on

00:04:39.620 our screens can affect us cognitively, emotionally, et cetera. And then some things you've discovered

00:04:46.580 in your lab and your research that we can do to kind of harness our attention better.

00:04:51.060 So let's start off with some definitions. Like how, how do researchers define attention?

00:04:56.900 So actually, let me go back to where it started. So William James is known as the father of psychology,

00:05:04.340 and this was back in the 19th century. And he defined attention as the taking possession by the mind

00:05:13.300 in clear and vivid form of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains

00:05:21.700 of thought. So he says, everyone knows what attention is. Of course we do. But, you know, as we go around

00:05:30.900 the world and we observe different things, there are certain things we decide what to focus on. We select

00:05:38.660 certain things to focus on. And according to William James, we do this out of our own volition. In other

00:05:47.060 words, we're in fully control of our attention. Well, you know, unfortunately, James didn't get it completely

00:05:54.100 right. So attention can be under your control. And when it is, it's called controlled processing. But attention can

00:06:04.660 also be automatic. So there can be things that just grab our attention, even unconsciously for us.

00:06:12.740 You know, from an evolutionary perspective, we responded to danger signals in the environment. So

00:06:18.900 people used to scan the environment and anything that might be perceived as dangerous would grab their

00:06:26.340 attention. But we've evolved to respond automatically to signals in our current environment.

00:06:33.300 So things like blinking lights, or certain words that just target very basic emotions,

00:06:41.380 like fear. And of course, a lot of these kinds of stimuli are what we see on our devices,

00:06:48.020 like notifications, targeted ads. So we quickly respond to them, and we can't help but respond to them.

00:06:55.940 It's the same way if you were driving a traffic light suddenly turns red, you can't help but respond

00:07:02.420 to that you automatically stop. So yeah, there's like a top down attention where we're deciding where

00:07:09.620 we're focusing our attention. And then there's like a bottom up attention where the environment

00:07:13.540 kind of dictates what we're going to pay attention to. That's right. And when it's top down,

00:07:18.820 you're very goal oriented, right? So attention is directed to what our goal is. And when you have

00:07:26.340 a particular internal goal, that's, that's where you're paying attention to. We tend to think of

00:07:33.060 attention as being in one place in the mind, but it's actually a system of different networks.

00:07:38.980 So you have one network is concerned with vigilance, another one with orienting, which is choosing where

00:07:47.540 to focus. And then another part is called executive control, and this manages interference. So things

00:07:56.660 like distractions, it tries to guard against distractions. So there's, there's top down attention,

00:08:02.420 which is we're controlling the sort of bottom up attention where the environment is causing us to

00:08:07.620 focus on things. If you hear a loud noise, a bright light, a notification, your phone, that's bottom

00:08:11.860 up. Then you also talk about, there's other types of attention. You talk about the difference between

00:08:15.780 sustained in this idea that you've come up with. I like it's kinetic attention. What are the differences

00:08:21.300 between the two? Right. Sustained attention is a period of uninterrupted focus. Usually it's a

00:08:29.220 relatively long period. Kinetic is a term that, that I came up with to describe the kind of

00:08:36.900 dynamic attention that we're seeing when people are, for example, switching screens or switching

00:08:43.780 devices or when they're scrolling. It reflects the idea that their attention is jumping around. It's not

00:08:52.900 sustained on any particular screen or piece of text. And I think another point you make too,

00:09:00.660 is that our attention, there's like domains of our attention. So I thought this was really insightful.

00:09:05.620 So let's say someone has a goal of planning a trip, right? They're there for the next hour.

00:09:11.460 They're just going to focus on planning a trip, but you highlight when you're planning a trip,

00:09:15.780 you're probably shifting your attention to multiple different things within that goal of planning a

00:09:21.700 trip. So you're checking kayak.com, looking at the prices, and then you're texting your wife. Well,

00:09:26.740 here's, here's this date we could go. And then you're checking your bank account. So like,

00:09:30.740 while you're focused on that top goal of planning a trip, you're actually shifting your attention to

00:09:36.740 different things to accomplish that goal. That's right. So you can think of, you know,

00:09:42.740 when we do say any kind of work on our devices, you can look at it through zooming in or zooming out.

00:09:51.060 When you zoom in, you might look at it as people switching different screens. Like you talked

00:09:57.140 about going from kayak.com to say, going to your bank account, to looking at different places on

00:10:04.260 the web that you might want to travel to. And when you zoom out, you're looking at it as an entire

00:10:10.500 project. This is my project of planning my trip. And then you're switching from that project to some

00:10:17.380 other projects, such as, you know, working on that committee report to some other projects,

00:10:23.780 such as, you know, writing a chapter. So we can look at our attention at different levels,

00:10:30.500 different levels of granularity. And the other thing you point out too,

00:10:34.500 that was interesting is that the distractions or things that could also bubble up to cause us to lose

00:10:40.260 focus that sort of top down can come from inside of ourselves, right? You're working on a project and

00:10:45.220 you're thinking, oh, I want to look up the price of whatever right now for no reason whatsoever.

00:10:51.540 And then you, you go do that. Yeah. So it, it, it seems so obvious now, but when we first started

00:10:57.380 studying this, we assumed that all distractions and interruptions originated from outside of ourselves

00:11:05.060 and we would be observing people and you might see someone say, working on a word document.

00:11:11.060 And for no explainable reason, they suddenly stopped and would pick up their phone or would turn to

00:11:18.820 their email. And then we realized that this is a quite common thing. And it turns out that people are

00:11:26.100 just about as likely to interrupt themselves as to be interrupted by something in the environment.

00:11:33.460 It was surprising at the time. And now it just seems like quite an intuitive thing.

00:11:39.140 So I think a lot of people have experienced the frustration of, you know, I want to focus on this

00:11:43.780 one thing, but then I get distracted and then you feel bad. So what happens whenever we switch our

00:11:49.940 attention from one task to the next and lose that sustained focus, you know, what's going on in our brain

00:11:56.260 and why do we feel bad? You know, like, why does it give us that, you know, that frazzled feeling?

00:12:00.820 So, you know, every time we switch our attention to something else, we have to recreate a new internal

00:12:09.540 representation of that thing that we're looking at. So if you're working on a report, you have an

00:12:17.700 internal representation of that report. You have a sense of what's going into that report, you know,

00:12:25.460 what are the sections of the report, how it's organized. And then suddenly you switch your

00:12:30.340 attention to do email. And you're being asked to provide some information. So now you have to create

00:12:38.260 a new internal representation of whatever that information is that you have to send, say, to your

00:12:46.820 manager or your colleague. And then you might switch to something else and have to create a new internal

00:12:53.380 representation. And then at some point, you finally go back to that original task. And you have to

00:13:00.340 think of it as redrawing that internal representation. Now, when we're switching really fast,

00:13:07.780 you know, you can think of it as as an internal whiteboard. And every time we're switching, we're

00:13:14.740 erasing that representation and redrawing it, switching again, erasing it and redrawing it.

00:13:21.060 And when we do that very rapidly, right, this requires a lot of mental effort. Now, when you

00:13:28.740 talk about what happens, what are the consequences of switching so fast, there are consequences,

00:13:35.620 performance suffers. So first of all, and this has been shown from decades of research that people

00:13:42.820 make more errors when they switch their attention back and forth among different things. There's been

00:13:49.380 studies shown with doctors and nurses and pilots. We also know that it takes more time to do tasks

00:13:57.620 when you're switching. Remember, you're recreating that internal representation, there's time that it

00:14:04.260 takes to reorient to that new thing you're looking at. It's like switching gears in our minds. And it

00:14:11.860 takes time, it uses up our precious mental resources. This is above and beyond what we need for actually

00:14:19.540 doing the work. Now, probably, the worst thing of all is that we get stressed. So when we're switching

00:14:27.380 our attention, when we're multitasking, it's also been shown in the laboratory that blood pressure rises,

00:14:34.420 there's a physiological marker that indicates people are stressed. In my own research, we've had people

00:14:41.540 wear heart rate monitors in their real world work environments. And we know that their stress goes up

00:14:49.700 when their attention switching goes up as well. And when people report stress, their perceived level of

00:14:58.020 stress goes up. All these measures are consistent and shows that, you know, people get more stressed.

00:15:04.900 So this is why planning a trip can feel not great, because you're constantly shifting your attention.

00:15:09.940 Yes, yeah, you have to keep all that information in mind. And you have to keep updating that information

00:15:17.540 in your mind. And yes, it can take up a lot of your very precious and limited mental resources.

00:15:24.660 And I think you highlight this research that you've all done about task switching. So I think when

00:15:30.340 people think, well, I'm multitasking, I think everyone's heard that you're not really multitasking,

00:15:34.340 you're just switching from one task to the next quickly, might feel like you're doing two things at

00:15:38.660 the same time, but you're not. But you talk about whenever you switch to a task, and then switch back

00:15:44.420 to that task you interrupted yourself on, it takes a long, it takes a lot longer to get your brain

00:15:49.700 going back in gear to that original task. What's the kind of average time?

00:15:54.580 That's right. So remember, we talked about zooming in and zooming out. So if we look at zooming out

00:16:01.460 again, and we look at switching between different projects. So you have a project of planning your

00:16:07.140 vacation, then you have another project of doing a committee report, and then you have another project

00:16:14.180 of, let's say, planning your podcast. So every time you switch at that level, it takes an average

00:16:21.860 of about 25 and a half minutes to get back to that original interrupted project. Now, what do we do in

00:16:29.860 those 25 and a half minutes? We're not just looking into the air, we're actually working on other things.

00:16:36.900 So we actually work on average, about two and a quarter different projects. So let me explain what

00:16:44.740 that means. So we get interrupted, either by ourselves or by something external to us. We're

00:16:52.180 working on a second thing, we get interrupted again. So then we begin working on a third thing,

00:16:59.300 we get interrupted again, we start working on another project, and we only spend roughly about a

00:17:06.100 quarter of the time compared to the others on that. And then we go back to the original task. Now,

00:17:14.260 if you're in computer science, this would be called nested interruptions. And what that means is you're

00:17:22.420 interrupted from your interruption, if that makes sense. So this is a general pattern. Remember, we're

00:17:29.940 looking at averages and general patterns that we see for many people over the work day. So the main

00:17:36.660 point is that when you're interrupted, you generally don't just work on one thing, and then go back to

00:17:42.340 the original task. But there's intervening things that you take care of before you go back.

00:17:47.780 And this is why with task switching or multitasking, it takes longer to get stuff done.

00:17:52.100 That's right. Yeah. And you know, it turns out that most people prefer to not multitask. That's

00:17:59.620 called monotasking, where you work on one thing through to completion, and then start something

00:18:05.940 else. Most people by and large prefer that. But it turns out, you know, we don't, we work in what's

00:18:12.820 called a polychronic world. This is a world where multitasking is just thrust upon us, we have so many

00:18:21.140 demands that we have to meet, you know, email and slack and phone calls. And so there are so many other

00:18:28.340 demands on our time, that it becomes a polychronic world, which means we're switching among different

00:18:35.300 things. And I like the analogy of when we switch a task, it's like a whiteboard in our brain. So you're

00:18:41.140 working on one task, you switch to another one. So you have to erase the previous sort of schema or

00:18:46.020 mental model of that task and draw a new one. Well, just as on a whiteboard, when you erase

00:18:51.540 something, there's a residue left over. Oh, yes. There's, there's a, there's a residue left over

00:18:57.120 when we task switch as well, like a mental residue. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. Because

00:19:02.980 you know, imagine that you're reading some really gripping story on a blog. And, you know, you're reading

00:19:10.820 about, let's say, a horrific accident. And then you go back to your work, well, that horrific accident,

00:19:18.340 you know, it's going to stay with you, right? There's remnants of it, that will stay with you

00:19:22.840 and interfere with your current task at hand. So you're absolutely right, we can't always erase that

00:19:29.220 internal whiteboard completely. And that can just cause us to not be able to think as clearly or as

00:19:35.840 effectively as we'd like on that, that new task. We're just still thinking about the other thing.

00:19:40.620 That's right. Yeah, it creates interference.

00:19:43.440 Okay, so I think we've got done a good job of highlighting what attention is, how it works. You

00:19:47.400 know, you can have top down attention, bottom up, you can zoom in, zoom out. When we shift our attention

00:19:52.740 to different tasks or activities, that causes a lot of just it's cognitively expensive, it wears you out,

00:19:59.380 and it can stress you out as well. Let's talk about what influences our ability to direct our

00:20:05.020 attention, or have our attention drawn to things. Let's talk about ourselves. You've done research

00:20:09.920 that our personality can influence our ability to pay attention. What does that research say?

00:20:16.700 So it turns out that you're right. You know, people, we are unique beings, we have different

00:20:23.040 personalities. There is a personality test that's called the big five. And this is the most widely used

00:20:30.880 personality test. And there are five different dimensions in this test. There's extroversion,

00:20:38.440 there's agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. It turns out that people

00:20:46.740 who score high on the dimension of neuroticism tend to have the shortest attention span. What is

00:20:55.100 neuroticism? When a person is neurotic, they tend to be more susceptible to stress, they tend to reanalyze

00:21:03.200 past events over and over in their mind. So you had a, let's say you had a conflict with your colleague,

00:21:10.660 and you keep replaying that over and over in your mind. This kind of continuous replay in our minds uses

00:21:18.880 up a lot of our cognitive resources. And when we're using our cognitive resources in that way,

00:21:26.020 there's less resources to actually apply to looking at that information in front of you. So there's

00:21:34.280 fewer attentional resources available to devote to the current activity. So people who are neurotics

00:21:42.360 tend to have shorter attention spans. There's another personality facet that's called urgency.

00:21:51.420 And that's related to being impulsive. So when a person scores high in this, what's called urgency,

00:21:59.740 they're impulsive in the short term, they can't restrain themselves, they just have to react on whims.

00:22:06.280 And it turns out that people who score high in this area also tend to have shorter attention spans.

00:22:14.920 So and, you know, one reason is that if you're impulsive in this sense, in this short term way,

00:22:22.180 you just can't restrain yourself from responding to distractions. Now, you know, we looked at those

00:22:30.460 results in our research. And we also looked at people's susceptibility to stress. And we find

00:22:38.140 that there's a personality trait when we put all this together that I call lack of control. And this

00:22:45.820 does suggest that there is a personality trait that's associated with distractedness that's correlated

00:22:53.000 with having short attention spans on our screens.

00:22:56.360 And I imagine these individuals will have to kind of do some metacognition to try to figure out what

00:23:01.500 can I do to maybe shape my environment so I'm not as distracted because I have that personality to be

00:23:07.300 distracted.

00:23:08.540 That's right. You know, just because we're dealt a bad set of cards with our personalities

00:23:13.760 does not mean that we can't change. We absolutely can change. There are things that we can do that

00:23:21.000 everyone can do to increase their attention spans.

00:23:24.820 We also uncovered some counterintuitive findings with personality with people who are conscientious.

00:23:30.040 So people who are conscientious, they're, you know, they're very focused. They're like the person

00:23:33.900 with the binders and like label different colors, et cetera. But I think, correct me if I'm wrong,

00:23:38.660 there was some research where people who are, who score high in conscientiousness, they actually,

00:23:43.080 I think they end up taking more breaks from work because I guess they just wear themselves out

00:23:47.600 faster because they're just so focused.

00:23:48.980 Well, there's some really interesting things with people who are conscientious. I am

00:23:54.440 a conscientious person. One of the things we find is that they tend to check their email

00:24:00.180 more frequently. They check it more frequently than other people. The way I would interpret that

00:24:06.860 is that they're like a sentry on duty. They don't want to let anything slip by. So they want to make

00:24:12.800 sure they're just on top of things. And as a result, they keep checking their email. You know, we, we did

00:24:19.680 do a study where we tested software for blocking distractions, and we wanted to see how effective it

00:24:27.600 was. And it turns out when a person scores very low in self-regulation, this is a person who's very

00:24:35.700 impulsive. This kind of blocking distractions can be helpful, at least in the short term. But when a

00:24:42.760 person is conscientious, it's actually very harmful. Why? Because a conscious person can go to some

00:24:51.980 distracting site like social media, but then they can come right back to their work. So they don't get

00:24:58.620 lost in rabbit holes. But when we cut off their, these distractions like social media, they tend to work

00:25:05.640 straight through without breaks. And as a result, we find that they get burned out. So when a person is

00:25:13.080 conscientious, they're very good at being able to take breaks on social media or news sites or

00:25:21.860 wherever. And they're also very good at getting back on track. And they also highlight there's research

00:25:27.940 our emotions can affect our attention. So if we're in a positive state and have positive affect, our

00:25:33.440 attention, I think, broadens and widens. And we see things that we wouldn't typically see. And when

00:25:37.560 we get more negative, we start narrowing in on things. And I think we've all experienced that

00:25:42.380 whenever you're getting a bad mood, just like little things just really bother you a lot. And you just

00:25:47.600 focus all your attention on that. And the research backs that up. Oh, that's absolutely right. So, you

00:25:53.680 know, when you feel positive, and when you're experiencing positive events, this can help us replenish

00:26:01.460 our attentional resources. This is called the broaden and build theory in psychology. And

00:26:07.760 basically, what that says is when we have more attentional resources available, we can focus better,

00:26:14.980 we have more energy to resist distractions. So, you know, these are studies done that people,

00:26:22.160 they have certain stimuli that make them feel positive, like they watch a film that makes them,

00:26:28.480 you know, feel happier. And then they give a test and it shows that they can generate more ideas and

00:26:37.020 better quality ideas compared to others who were given some kind of stimulus, like a film that

00:26:44.120 elicits a negative affect. So, you know, being positive is a really good thing when it comes to

00:26:51.100 attention. It can really work for us. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:26:57.000 And now back to the show. So, we've talked about how our personality and our emotions can affect

00:27:06.960 our ability to pay attention. Let's talk about our external environment. I think particularly the

00:27:11.100 internet. I think that's the thing that people are just most frustrated when they're frustrated

00:27:14.440 about. I can't pay attention. They look like, well, it's the internet. I'm just so distracted.

00:27:18.540 That's where you go. So, you started this research, you know, more than 20 years ago,

00:27:22.980 sort of the birth of the internet as we know it today. How has the internet changed over that time

00:27:29.540 and how has that affected our attention spans? Well, I think we can all blame our distractions

00:27:36.220 to a single individual by the name of Vannevar Bush. I'm being a little, I'm exaggerating a little bit

00:27:45.080 here. But Vannevar Bush was an engineer who back in 1945, he led the U.S. Office of Scientific Research

00:27:55.240 and he was very frustrated with the way information was organized. And at the time, it was organized

00:28:02.220 according to the Dewey Decimal System. And he said, this is too artificial. People can't find information

00:28:08.860 like this. So, he said, information should be organized the way people think and people think

00:28:15.500 by associations. And so, he came up with this idea, was just an ingenious idea called the Memex.

00:28:24.240 And the Memex was, it was an idea, it was never built. It was the idea that we should organize

00:28:29.880 information, all our documents, our media, our photos, our letters of correspondence, all of that

00:28:38.140 should be organized so that they're associated together in some way. And that's how the idea of

00:28:44.160 nodes and links came up. It's a great idea. And it's even worked a little bit too well because

00:28:50.840 the theory of how our minds and memory is organized is according to a semantic network of associations.

00:29:01.700 So, the design of the internet mimics the way that human memory is theorized

00:29:07.820 to be organized as this semantic network of associated ideas. So, when we go on, say,

00:29:16.040 a Wikipedia page, there are so many points of entry into our minds network, right? And we see an idea

00:29:24.160 and this, it sets off just a firestorm of other associations in our minds. And so, we start surfing

00:29:32.100 through the internet. We see a link, we click on that. It sets off a whole series of other kinds

00:29:38.480 of associations in our minds. We might see another link, sets off other associations. And before we

00:29:45.360 know it, we're just traveling through the internet and get ourselves into a rabbit hole. So, the internet,

00:29:53.320 of course, it's grown. It's, with its open architecture, anybody can contribute. And anybody and

00:30:00.120 everybody has, the internet has grown. We have, every year, there's more and new ways

00:30:06.700 to distract us. So, it's a combination of the internet design and also how our memories are

00:30:14.500 theorized to be structured.

00:30:16.380 Right. Those connections. I think we've all experienced. I know, there's a couple of months

00:30:19.660 ago, I remember this one. I was reading an article. I don't even remember what it was about, but somehow

00:30:23.240 I ended up watching videos of the Osmonds from the 70s. And I was like, how did I get here? I don't

00:30:29.680 remember. This had nothing. And then also added to that. So, the internet is distracting and causes

00:30:34.680 it to get distracted because it overlays how our mind theoretically works. But then, in the past 15,

00:30:41.040 20 years, we've added that social element to the internet, which we're social animals. So,

00:30:47.320 we're going to get distracted by that as well.

00:30:49.720 That's right. We're just social beings. And our social natures just compel us to go on social

00:30:56.180 media. So, we seek social rewards. We're geared to exchange social capital, which means exchanging

00:31:03.980 resources and favors with other people. We spend a lot of time on the internet because we care about

00:31:11.140 our online identity. We spend a lot of time building up that identity. And we're influenced

00:31:18.380 by others, socially influenced by others. So, all of these social forces, they interact with the

00:31:26.020 design of social media platforms and other things online that enable us to connect with other people.

00:31:35.520 And then, you also have the developers of these platforms and even media companies. They figured out

00:31:40.640 that, well, if you can get that quick hit, you're going to have people spend more time. So,

00:31:45.960 YouTube videos or the TikToks, they've gotten shorter and shorter. And that seems to cause

00:31:52.360 people to spend more time. Yes, that's right. I mean, TikTok has an algorithm that's very agile

00:31:59.620 and it adapts to what it believes the viewer likes. And every so often, when you watch TikTok,

00:32:07.760 you're going to find some video that's just hilarious. It's not going to be every video,

00:32:13.200 but it's going to come along every once in a while. And that's called intermittent reinforcement.

00:32:19.080 And it's enough to keep you there. It's enough to get you stuck there. If you knew that every third

00:32:25.420 video would be hilarious, and then all of a sudden that stopped, you know, the third video came along and

00:32:32.920 it wasn't funny, you would stop watching TikTok, right? From a psychological perspective, it's called

00:32:40.320 the behavior is extinguished. But when you have intermittent or random reinforcement, you don't

00:32:47.340 know when that next funny video is coming. And so, you stick with it, right? Because you know it's going

00:32:53.160 to come at a random interval. And, you know, even if it might be 10 videos before something comes along

00:32:59.540 that's funny, you still know it's coming and you wait for it. So, the hardest behavior to extinguish

00:33:06.960 is this kind of intermittent random reinforcement. Well, with TikTok, their algorithm is kind of is

00:33:13.780 in a black box, but there's people have some ideas of how it works. And there's, I mean, it's amazing

00:33:18.620 the things they're looking at to figure out which video to show to you. Like, they'll show certain

00:33:23.440 videos to you depending on where you're at, whether you're at work or at home, depending on what time

00:33:28.460 of day it is, in the morning or at night. They figure out, well, at night you like to watch these

00:33:32.760 certain types of videos. They're going to show you that. You know, they'll look at how long you're

00:33:36.280 even looking at a video. And that's sort of an indication, well, they like this one. So, they're

00:33:40.100 going to show you more of that. So, it's just more trying to hook our attention. They're using your

00:33:44.640 external environment to hook your attention. That's right. We leave so many digital traces on the

00:33:51.340 internet that can be mined and used to capture our attention. So, another thing you talk about

00:33:57.280 your research has looked at is how the way movies and television shows are edited have probably

00:34:04.440 contributed to our shortening attention span. What's going on there? Well, yeah, it's interesting.

00:34:10.280 It's a chicken and egg question. We don't know what's influencing what. We do know that TV and film

00:34:17.540 shot lengths have decreased over the years. They started out much longer. They now average to be

00:34:23.700 about four seconds. That's pretty short. We also know commercials have shortened. Commercials used

00:34:31.020 to be a lot longer. Now, it's not uncommon to see six-second commercials. So, you know, we can't assess

00:34:39.000 causality. We can't say that short TV shot lengths caused us to have short attention spans on the screen.

00:34:46.940 It could be the other way around. It could be that film directors and editors are influenced by their

00:34:53.560 own short attention spans to make shot lengths short. It could be that they're gearing and editing

00:35:01.200 film and TV to what they think the viewer wants to see. They may believe that the viewer doesn't have

00:35:07.500 the capacity to watch anything longer than a four-second shot length. So, you know, it's a chicken and

00:35:14.600 egg question. We don't know. It's an interesting parallel trend that's going on. And my interpretation

00:35:21.860 is that this only reinforces us to have short attention spans. And then, you know, the other

00:35:29.180 thing to look at is when we use social media, social media platforms constrain the length of our content

00:35:37.880 that we can post, right? Whether it's Twitter, when we text, we tend to text in very short

00:35:43.880 length simply because it's difficult to write long text. And, you know, videos like, for example,

00:35:51.000 on TikTok promote short videos. So from many different directions, we're encouraged for our

00:35:58.940 content to be short.

00:36:01.160 No, we've experienced the difference between movies made today compared to 20, 30, 40 years ago. So my son,

00:36:10.400 he's 12 and a couple of weeks ago, you get on this Rocky kick. He all of a sudden, I want to watch the

00:36:14.700 Rocky series. And we're like, okay. Uh, my wife and I, I don't know if you're going to like our daughter's

00:36:20.480 nine. I don't know if you guys are going to like this because it's, it's made in the seventies. It's really

00:36:24.380 slow. You guys are used to watching your YouTube videos where there's the jump cuts and people screaming and

00:36:30.160 whatever, but we watched it and yeah, I mean, you forget how slow movies were like Rocky. There's hardly any

00:36:37.020 action in it. The boxing happens at the very end. And then the shots are just these really long

00:36:41.480 shots, maybe 10, 20 seconds on a, on a, on a single frame. And it was, it was, I was surprised

00:36:47.900 my kids, they actually took to it. They've actually enjoyed it. They actually embraced it, but it was

00:36:51.900 jarring to kind of go back in time to see how movies were edited 30, 40 years ago. Yeah. Yeah.

00:36:58.320 So I think a lot of us, we'd like to rein in our scattered attention. We know we might have a

00:37:02.900 problem. We want to get more focused, but your research has led you to the conclusion that trying

00:37:08.380 to be productive and focused all the time just isn't possible or even desirable. Why is that?

00:37:15.020 Well, that's because we just can't have sustained focus for lengthy periods in the same way that we

00:37:22.140 just can't lift weights all day without stopping. So we have a limited amount of attentional resources.

00:37:29.160 You can think of it as your attentional capacity. And when you just have sustained focus for a long

00:37:35.840 time, imagine one zoom meeting after another, where you really have to pay attention. We just can't do

00:37:41.800 this without getting exhausted. So what we really need to think about is taking meaningful breaks. And

00:37:50.860 when we talked earlier in this program about the importance of positive affect and wellbeing,

00:37:58.260 that's really important to aim for when we use our devices, because then we preserve and build up our

00:38:06.260 attentional resources. When we have a full tank of attentional resources, we can actually do more.

00:38:12.840 We can be more efficient. We can be more productive. So rather than focus for extended periods and just get

00:38:20.600 yourself exhausted, stop, take a break, replenish, and then you'll actually be more productive.

00:38:27.380 And you also, one thing we should be doing is trying to figure out our attentional rhythm. Just as

00:38:33.300 there's a rhythm to a day, you know, the sun rises and the sun goes down, we have a rhythm for our

00:38:39.240 attention as well.

00:38:40.720 Yes. So we did a study where we probed people over the course of the day and we would probe them about

00:38:49.260 18 times a day. And the irony does not escape me that we interrupted them 18 times a day, but they

00:38:56.520 were very, very short probes that they could answer in a few seconds. And we asked them how engaged they

00:39:02.880 were in what they were doing and how challenged they were. And what we found based on this aggregating the

00:39:09.960 results is that focused attention does have a rhythm over the day. And there seems to be two peaks.

00:39:17.960 For most people, their peak focus time is late morning around 11am and also mid to late afternoon

00:39:25.420 between 2 and 3pm. And this ebb and flow of our focus seems to coincide with our expending mental

00:39:35.100 resources. Right? So when we're at our peak mental resources, that's when we can apply them and be

00:39:41.640 most focused. So how can you find out your rhythm? Well, one thing you could do is to learn your

00:39:48.500 chronotype. Most people have a good sense of whether they're an early type, you know, you like to wake up

00:39:55.580 really early. And that's when you're at your best or your late type, where you really need to sleep in

00:40:02.960 before you can perform well. But you can actually take a test to find out what your chronotype is.

00:40:11.380 There's something called the morningness, eveningness questionnaire. So that's one thing you can do.

00:40:16.820 But the other thing is to learn to get a sense of how exhausted you are, how energetic you are.

00:40:25.500 You can even keep a diary throughout the day of, you know, what your level of attention is.

00:40:31.620 That can help you understand what your peak is, when your best performance is. And why is that

00:40:38.680 important? It's because then you can begin to plan your day and save that time for your hardest work,

00:40:46.340 the work that requires the most creativity. You don't want to waste that peak focus time doing email

00:40:52.600 or, you know, doing social media. You want to save it for work that really needs attentional resources.

00:41:01.620 So this is all about, you know, I think you make the point. I like this. It's about developing more

00:41:05.480 agency over your, your attention. Yes. Instead of feeling like you have no control of your attention,

00:41:10.840 you have some control and knowing when you have the most focus that can help you kind of arrange your

00:41:15.300 day and your environment to take advantage of that. I mean, any tips on you found for self-regulating?

00:41:20.860 So even if you figure out how to arrange your schedule, so you you're working on the most,

00:41:25.080 you know, attention needed task at the, your peak attention time, you're still going to get that

00:41:30.840 temptation to be distracted and do something else. Are there any tips that people can do to better

00:41:35.680 self-regulate? Yes. Yes, there are. So one of the things you can do is learn to probe yourself

00:41:43.420 and gain what I call meta-awareness. Meta-awareness means being aware of what you're doing as it's

00:41:51.540 unfolding. So we do so many things that are automatic that we talked about earlier here,

00:41:56.860 bring those automatic actions to a conscious awareness. So every time you go to grab your phone,

00:42:03.560 you can probe yourself and ask, what, why do I feel a need to do that? Why do I feel a need to

00:42:10.080 switch screens and go to read news or go to social media? Is it because I'm bored? Is it because what

00:42:18.380 I'm doing is too hard? Is it simply a habit? And once you become aware of it and understand the

00:42:24.840 reasons, this can help curtail it. Another thing we can do is practice forethought. And this means

00:42:31.920 understanding how your current actions are going to impact your life later in the day. So what's

00:42:38.580 your future self going to look like at the end of the day? If I go and spend an hour on social media,

00:42:45.960 what's my life going to be like at 10 p.m.? Am I going to be still up working on that overdue report?

00:42:52.840 Or am I going to be feeling fulfilled that I accomplished a lot today? I can relax, I can have

00:43:00.660 a glass of wine. So practicing forethought. And another thing that's really, really important

00:43:07.380 is keeping goals in mind. So remember, attention is goal directed. We pay attention to what our goal

00:43:15.580 is. As long as we keep our goal in mind, our attention is directed toward that. So I did an

00:43:23.140 experiment with colleagues at Microsoft Research. And we used a conversational bot to remind people

00:43:30.520 of their goals for that day at the beginning of the day. And people actually did perform better,

00:43:36.900 at least for the short term, for a short period of time. And from this, we learned that yes, it's

00:43:43.540 important to be aware of your goals, but it's also important to continually remind ourselves of our

00:43:51.320 goals. So, you know, it's a dynamic process. It's not just once at the beginning of the day,

00:43:56.720 we have to continually remind ourselves.

00:43:59.980 And another thing you point out, I think a lot of people, when they're like, I want to get better,

00:44:02.780 I want to get more focused. They're like, well, I'm going to install an attention

00:44:05.680 distracting or a blocking app. You mentioned earlier for people who are distractible,

00:44:10.820 we've got that personality for distractibility, it could help. Conscientious people could backfire

00:44:15.140 because you end up working more. But you actually say, you know, what you really need to do,

00:44:18.520 you're better off is developing that sense of agency with that sort of that probing you do.

00:44:22.240 So you can just do it on your own. You'll be better off that way. Yeah. And then you also,

00:44:28.300 I thought this was surprising. You tell people not to feel guilty about doing this sort of

00:44:33.100 rote online activities that they do, like playing games or scrolling social media. Why is that?

00:44:38.780 Yeah. And it's not just online activities, but any kind of rote activity. So first of all,

00:44:45.020 you know, people are happiest, they're calmest when they do these kinds of rote activities.

00:44:50.380 They can help relax us. And if we use them right, you know, they can even help us build up our

00:44:57.920 mental resources because, you know, we're engaged in something, but we're not expending a lot of

00:45:04.500 mental resources. But it's so important to be strategic about using this. You know,

00:45:10.880 we can't play simple games all day, you know, but it is fine for a short break. And if you have,

00:45:17.120 let's say you, you're, you feel pretty exhausted and you've got another meeting coming up in 10

00:45:22.940 minutes, it's okay to just pull back, do something that's going to calm you. And you know, in 10 minutes,

00:45:30.420 you're going to have to stop. And, but I want to emphasize the best break of all is to go outside

00:45:36.800 and take a walk in nature because studies show that that helps us de-stress. It helps us generate

00:45:43.500 more ideas. It's called divergent thinking. That's the most important thing we can do. But if you,

00:45:50.600 if you can't do it and circumstances don't always allow that, then it's okay to take an online break,

00:45:57.720 but be strategic. And you have to find some hook that's going to pull you out. If you can't do it

00:46:06.120 on your own, whether it's setting a timer or whether you do it 10 minutes before a meeting,

00:46:11.420 but you have to make sure that you don't get stuck in it. And it, yeah, we should not feel guilty for

00:46:17.200 doing that. Okay. So if you want to take a little break to do a, you know, a quick game or do a social

00:46:22.940 media scroll or better yet, you know, take a walk outside. Don't feel bad about that because we need

00:46:28.680 breaks to replenish our mental resources. And, uh, you know, it puts us in a positive mood. I mean,

00:46:34.520 well, maybe checking social media won't put you in a good mood, but you know, a simple game or walk

00:46:39.320 can put you in a positive mood. And like we talked about earlier, feeling calm and positive

00:46:45.000 really helps your focus overall, but you just need to be strategic about this all, you know,

00:46:50.380 make sure it's not something you're going to have, make sure you choose an activity that you're not

00:46:54.640 going to have trouble pulling away from. And, you know, I think the big takeaway you want people to

00:46:59.060 understand is that yes, we can figure out ways to be better focused, but it's not possible to be

00:47:04.800 focused all the time. So it's really about learning, uh, how to follow your natural rhythms,

00:47:09.480 focusing when you need to, but also allowing yourself breaks, you know, cutting yourself some

00:47:14.640 slack. You want people to have, you want people to have balance, like a balanced focus.

00:47:19.680 Yes, absolutely. That achieving a psychological balance is really the most important thing we can

00:47:27.120 think about when we use our devices. Tech is not going away. You know, some people do a digital

00:47:33.300 detox. That's fine, but it's not a permanent solution. And for anyone to pull off completely

00:47:39.400 from digital technology, it only penalizes that person. If you're a knowledge worker, you get cut

00:47:46.280 off from important work communications for other, for all of us, even we get cut off from loved ones and

00:47:53.880 friends and family. So a digital detox is, you know, it might work in the very short term, but it's just

00:48:01.600 not a permanent solution. It's better for us to develop agency, to control our own attention.

00:48:09.180 And, you know, the ship has sailed. Tech is here to stay. So let's learn to live with it and feel

00:48:16.160 positive when we use it. Well, Glory, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn

00:48:21.140 more about the book and your work? Yes. So you can go to my website, which is www.gloriamark.com. That's

00:48:30.580 all one word, Gloria Bar. My book is called Attention Span, where I cover what we talked about today,

00:48:39.780 but a whole lot more. And I would be very happy to hear from you if you go to my website and would

00:48:46.640 love to hear what people think. Well, Gloria Mark, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:48:51.400 Oh, it's been a real pleasure too. Thank you. My guest today was Gloria Mark. She's the author

00:48:56.360 of the book, Attention Span. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can

00:49:00.040 find more information about her work at our website, gloriamark.com. Also check out our show notes

00:49:04.400 at aom.is slash attention, where you find links to resources, where you delve deeper into this topic.

00:49:08.560 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

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00:49:54.700 it's Brett McKay. Remind you to want to listen to AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

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The Art of Manliness - February 08, 2023

Get a Handle on Your Shrinking Attention Span

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