A Case for: Attention

Introduction

Welcome to Week Two of my quest to shine a light on THREE different concepts that I am convinced will make your life significantly better in 2025. 

Today I am making a case for ATTENTION. Not the attracting kind, but the paying kind. 

Confession time: while conducting research for this article I was distracted approximately 35 million times. Notifications, text messages, emails, someone coughing, the dog pawing at me to get attention for himself – it never stops. Having nonetheless persevered, three things became very clear: 

1. The amount of information we ask our brains to process on a daily basis has risen at least five-fold since 1986 (see research by Martin Hilbert of UC California, Davis); 

2. All the technology with which we surround ourselves is designed by default to compete for our attention; and

3. We mostly let it. 

This is important because our daily cognitive resources are in fact limited. How we nurture and apportion them can make a difference between:

• a stress- and anxiety-filled unproductive existence focused on short-term survival, and 
• a life of energised and empowered methodical progress towards your long-term goals. 

Not to mention that attention is how we express our love for those around us: if you’ve ever attempted to connect with someone who is staring at their phone, you’ll know exactly what I mean. 
If you’re struggling with your ability to concentrate 1) it’s not entirely your fault; and 2) you can take responsibility and do something about it. Read on!

Attention vs Focus

As much as philosophical question as it is a psychological one: Attention is a process by which a stimulus moves from unconsciousness to awareness. The way this happens is a subject of much scientific debate.

In traditional attention research paradigms, attention is divided into voluntary and involuntary attention. Former being the result of conscious goal-directed effort and the latter the result of outside stimulation requiring no effort. Plainly speaking, voluntary attention involves you actively switching attention from one stimulus to another while involuntary attention involves an extraneous stimulus like a buzzing mosquito or a screeching tyre of a car attracting your attention. 

There is now a suggestion that there is a third type of attention which uses mindfulness techniques to fluidly and voluntarily switch attention to extraneous stimulation without effort. This type of attention training has been found to be indispensable for regulating emotion and stress. It is, however, outside the scope of this article. 

Focus on the other hand is a prolonged period of directed attention and is therefore entirely voluntary and effortful.

Attention in the Brain

Attention is a key cognitive skill and involves many neurotransmitter systems (acetylcholine, dopamine, norepinephrine, GABA) within and around the prefrontal cortex – the centre of human cognition. Importantly, these systems have both excitatory and inhibitory components that work together. The inhibitory aspect is impulse control. 

Simply put, attention is a result of work that involves wilfully bringing the important stimuli to the fore while actively suppressing the irrelevant ones. This is not just a helpful visual of the process. Thanks to the work by Robert Desimone at MIT, we now know that when we pay attention to something specific, neurons in the visual cortex responding to the visual stimulus we’re focusing on fire synchronously, whereas those responding to irrelevant information become suppressed. That work that you actively perform in achieving sustained attention is referred to as self-regulation.

Our Shrinking Attention Spans

There is a growing body of research that supports the finding that our attention spans have declined significantly over the past few decades. 

Gloria Mark PhD, Chancellor’s Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, has studied human information processing and attention for over thirty years and is the author of the 2023 book, “Attention Span”. 

Through her research, she was able to demonstrate that back in 2004 the average attention span on any screen task was 2.5 minutes. That number has come down to 47 seconds by 2017 with a median of 40, which means half the tasks measured were performed for less than 40 seconds. It has plateaued since then. 

So, while the volume of information we are processing daily has increased at least five-fold, our attention spans have reduced by a fifth!

Attention Shifting

You see, technically there is no such thing as multi-tasking; we are simply incapable of doing two complex tasks simultaneously. I emphasise the word “complex” here because we can obviously walk and talk and breathe all at the same time. But breathing and, to an extent, walking, are automated processes. Thinking, however is not. And what is talking other than an outward expression of thinking?

What we do instead is attention shift. Attention shifting is of course completely normal and a central component of our daily existence. 

However, excessive attention shifting because of a cacophony of noise we subject ourselves to (and are subjected to without our consent) leads to a whole host of problems.

Thankfully, attention shifting is well studied:

1. Even when two tasks are alike, attention shifting is cognitively costly i.e. mentally tiring (there is a lot of research on this; see for example Olivers C.N et al (2011) The costs of switching attentional sets).
2. Frequent attention shifting is related to stress and blood pressure increase (work by Gloria Mark, including Mark G (2008) The cost of interrupted work: more speed and stress).
3. Attention shifting slows you down and results in more errors.
4. Distractions that are similar in nature to the tasks you are already doing, will slow you down even more. 

Taking breaks is a good type of attention shifting that replenishes your mental resource tank. It is important to take a break at a natural stopping point in your work otherwise the mental strain of re-starting something half-way finished becomes counter-productive. 

The best way to replenish your mental resources tank is, you’ve guessed it, good sleep. If you are subjected to multiple sleep-deprived nights, the created sleep debt may cause you to prefer more cognitively lightweight tasks.

Why Does It Matter?

Good question. Perhaps many think that we can keep up and are all the richer for the vast amounts of information now available at our fingertips, compared to a few decades ago. Yes and no. While the information is there and our cognitive capacities are indeed great, the way we allocate our attention may mean that we are spreading ourselves too thin, and becoming more stressed, anxious, and unhealthy in the process. Thanks to social media and the 24-hour news cycle, we have a sense of being aware of a lot, while knowing very little in depth about any of it.    

As it pertains to our personal lives, my view is that we are jeopardising our well-being and the quality of our work product without even noticing.

What Can You Do?

This is my call to action to get more people not to squander their attention on junk.

Here is how to perform an audit on your daily distractions caused by technology:

1. Review the stimuli that vie for your attention in a manner that is disruptive and unhelpful. What is constantly buzzing, ringing, and flashing? Do they really serve a useful purpose? The truth is most of them don’t. But because computers have been programmed by default to stimulate us and grab our attention, often we leave those default settings in place. 

2. Wage a war on those default settings: You can do the overhaul app by app, or if you’re feeling inspired, turn everything off and see what you really miss! Then turn back on only the apps that serve a purpose.

Notification settings can usually be found either directly in the program you’re using on your computer under “settings” or “preferences” and then “notifications” or “sounds” or in the global settings of your computer or device under “notifications” or “sounds & haptics”. 

Let’s face it, not every news story or shop launch or discount offering is so important as to demand your immediate attention. All these sources want your attention, your likes, your comments, your money, but don’t let them in by default. Let them compete and win your attention. Proper attention – not just two seconds!

Set your focus. A few years ago, Apple introduced the “focus” mode where you can choose to what extent the device interrupts you with notifications. You can program “personal”, “work” and “sleep” focus modes to only let through certain notifications, while in “do not disturb” no notifications come through at all. 

Do you make use of this? Take the above steps first because more likely that not most of your notifications are useless. Once you pick the ones you like, then set up your focus settings. 

Now let’s talk about people. Thankfully, silencing notifications on your devices will also handily cut off the voice of anyone that tries to talk to you through them. But if you cut off people who don’t bring you any value at the source (i.e. unfollow and stop consuming their content), the algorithm will hopefully do its thing and send through more useful content from which you can benefit.  

1. What people and companies do you follow on social media.? Unfollow mercilessly unless they bring real value to your life. How many groups are you part of on Facebook? Do you get those notifications about someone selling their car in a country you no longer live? Because I just did and found a way to either silence notifications from that group or just leave it altogether.

2. What newspapers/magazines do you read? Are they reputable, credible, thorough in their reporting? If you’re going to outsource thinking to others on certain topics (and let’s face it we can’t research everything in greatest depth and not just because our attention spans are too short), you may as well take the time and put some effort in picking the right people to feed you stories and opinions. 

1. Whom do you listen to in real life? From whom do you take advice? Be careful whom you let in because we’re all influenceable and especially let our guard down with those closest to us, even if they are spewing complete nonsense. You can love someone and not agree with their opinions.

Conclusion

Attention is key to our daily existence and healthy cognitive function. We need to appreciate how valuable it is and take responsibility for the role we play in letting technology highjack it for its own benefit. Only then can we regain control.