Why is it so hard to focus these days? Do we have an unlimited amount of mental energy to use?
The biggest problem we face when trying to be productive is that the things that distract us seem limitless, especially now that the digital world has infiltrated every aspect of life. However, Gloria Mark’s book Attention Span says our devices aren’t entirely to blame.
Let’s look at the real reason why you and so many others may find it hard to concentrate on simple tasks.
Why It’s Hard to Concentrate
Why is it so hard to focus, according to Gloria Mark? She explains that our capacity for attention is inherently limited because, as research has long established, the amount of mental energy you have available is finite. Specifically, your executive control—the ability to stave off distractions and direct your attention at will—can run out. Feeling intellectually drained is real, and it has a physiological basis: When you direct your thoughts to a singular task, your body increases the amount of blood and oxygen to the specific regions of your brain that handle it. However, you can’t maintain increased blood flow indefinitely, and as it diminishes, so too does your ability to focus. Your body’s energy reserves need to be recharged, whether by relaxing or shifting your attention somewhere else.
(Shortform note: Mark may be overgeneralizing when she implies that only specific regions of the brain are associated with focusing on a given task. While executive control is in the purview of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, there are many regions within it that work in tandem by fulfilling different roles. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex integrates task-relevant information from other brain regions, while the anterior cingulate cortex assesses any conflicting information. Meanwhile, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex interacts with components of the Old Brain to determine the emotional meaning of whatever you’re focusing on. Together, every one of these systems works to enable focused attention, promote self-control, and enhance decision-making.)
Furthermore, Mark says we’re beleaguered by distractions that fall into two camps: those that come from within and those that come from without. In this section, we’ll explore both the ways you may be distracting yourself and the digital tools that are designed to distract you.
Internal Distractions
When your mental reserves run low, you’re vulnerable to attention-sapping pitfalls, some of which are internal and some are beyond your control. It’s easy to point the finger at external triggers such as the internet, social media, and other people infringing on your time. However, some of the blame for mismanaging your brain’s resources must be laid at the feet of some common psychological fallacies. Mark says these include:
- Misjudging how long the task you’re doing will take
- Devoting too much time to simple tasks instead of prioritizing harder tasks
- Following through on unproductive work because you’ve already put so much time into it
Mark’s research also shows that various aspects of your personality can contribute to how and why you get distracted. For instance, people who worry a lot and those who tend to be impulsive have consistently shorter attention spans when performing tasks on a computer—they frequently interrupt themselves by switching from app to app and screen to screen. On the other hand, people who are highly diligent in their work also suffer from internal distractions—they don’t mean to be unproductive, but they’re more likely to be constant email checkers, always on the lookout for important messages and responding right away, which disrupts their workflow.
A World of Interruptions
In addition to internal distractions, you deal with constant interruptions every day, which are equally tricky—if not harder—to contend with. Mark’s research shows that most of us interrupt ourselves as much as we’re interrupted by external factors. For instance, in the workplace, people check their email 75 times per day on average. Sometimes an email notification interrupts an ongoing task, but we’ll often stop to check our email without being prompted by a notification. We’ve grown so accustomed to email interruptions that we willingly disrupt our own attention to feed the habit.
The Push to Multitask
Even more pernicious than frequent interruptions is the pressure to do several things at once. Multitasking is now part of the world we live in, and it comes with significant cognitive and physiological costs. Mark’s research shows how our digital devices facilitate multitasking, what the psychological toll of it is, and how deeply it’s become a part of our lives.
Multitasking wasn’t born in the age of computers, but the degree to which digital technology encourages and enables switching between tasks is increasing. Mark has measured a significant decline in the average amount of time people focus on individual computer applications. In 2004, people averaged 150 seconds on a window or app before switching to another task. By 2021, this had decreased to 47 seconds. She also notes that it takes around 25 minutes to return to an interrupted task, and we typically work on several other tasks before resuming the original one. This constant attention-switching increases the brain’s workload, as we have to repeatedly refresh our memories of what we’d been working on before.
The Lure of the Internet
It goes without saying that we wouldn’t be drawn to electronic distractions if not for the internet. Digital connectivity makes more information readily available than ever before, but this comes with some unanticipated costs. Because of how the internet structures data, it opens the door to protracted online browsing, some of which is unintentional and some of which is driven by algorithms that exploit your innate tendency to get distracted.
Mark suggests that one major reason that internet use is so addictive is that the way the internet connects ideas mirrors how the human mind stores information. Rather than sorting ideas into categories, as a cataloger or librarian might do, both the brain and the internet group concepts by association.
For instance, when you think of your car, your mind might jump to a specific song you heard while driving, and from there to the artist who wrote that song, and to a concert venue where you saw them perform. Likewise, data on the internet is grouped by hyperlinks that take you from one topic to the next for as long as curiosity demands. It doesn’t take much—even tiny kernels of data can launch your brain’s curiosity-reward cycle, making associations and following links down meandering paths of information.
The Social Media Trap
While online algorithms sometimes direct us from one static website to another, Mark writes that the bulk of algorithmic attention control revolves around social media platforms. She says these sites sap away our focus by leaning on our desire for validation and our basic human nature.
As with in-person interactions, the online communities created by social media allow us to trade in social capital—the status, prestige, and comfort that comes from being a member of the “in group.” Mark identifies this as another source of distraction, since social media pressures us to spend time making posts, responding to comments, and checking for “likes,” tearing us away from other things we might be doing. If you’re a high-profile member in an online community, you’ll feel pulled to maintain or ramp up your engagement so that you can maintain your status, whereas if your online status is low, you may feel pressured to make more posts and connections to elevate your status.
At its most basic level, social media leverages our nature as social creatures to distract us from more fruitful uses of our time. Mark explains that these platforms influence us by mirroring, accelerating, and amplifying the social pressures we feel in real-world communities and gatherings. Perhaps surprisingly, while people claim to prefer face-to-face interactions, those who spend more time on social media report being happier overall. Mark suggests this may be due to the lower cognitive drain of online socializing (mostly in the form of “liking” posts and texting), while face-to-face interactions demand concentrated attention. But according to Mark, the price we pay for the ease of social media communication is heightened distractibility.
