5 simple ways to reclaim your attention
Primed for constant interruptions, your brain is now distracting itself, says science. It’s time to break the cycle and retrain your focus
by SOPHIE FREEMAN Sophie is a science writer who specialises in psychology.
May I have your attention, please? I’ll try and be quick, as I probably only have about 47 seconds before your mind starts wandering. That, according to psychologist Dr Gloria Mark, from the University of California, Irvine, is now our average attention span, based on her latest study of people’s use of screens in the workplace.
When her team conducted a similar study back in 2004 (before anyone had a smartphone and there was no such thing as TikTok) we could focus for two and a half minutes before wanting to switch to something new.
Of course, these figures have their limits. Your declining concentration when grinding out a report may not mean your overall focus levels are collapsing. After all, if you were sent a long message about some juicy gossip, you’d likely be able to give this your full focus for the required time.
As other psychologists have argued, your concentration can vary so much, that the very idea of an ‘average’ attention span is almost meaningless. Because of this, there isn’t even a scientific consensus on how to measure focus.
Nevertheless, it’s likely you feel like yours is dwindling. As one recent survey from the Centre for Attention Studies at King’s College London suggests, nearly half the population now feel as if theirs is worse than it was. With the ever-present pull of our emails (we check them 77 times a day, according to Mark’s research) and social media (up to 237 times a day for some), it’s easy to see why.
Of course, we can silence notifications, put on noise-cancelling headphones and work with applications that take up the full screen (tab clutter causes a significant drop in productivity, according to one 2021 study). Even when we’ve done all that, however, there’s still the enemy within to contend with.
You see, we’ve become so used to being distracted that we now distract ourselves. Unknowingly, you’re probably sabotaging yourself with “self-interruptions” all day long, according to Mark.
Even while reading this you may have gotten the sudden urge to look something up online, check your emails or anything else – even when in the middle of an activity – all because you’re so used to being bothered. “It’s really an unconscious action to switch,” Mark says. “Peo
