PDF Summary:Attention Span, by Gloria Mark

We often feel pressured to be as productive as possible, striving for intense, uninterrupted concentration—but what if being laser-focused isn’t just unrealistic, but detrimental? In Attention Span, Gloria Mark suggests that attention isn’t limited to binary states of focus or distraction, but that there are multiple types of attention, all of which have value—even time spent doing mindless work or letting your mind wander.

Mark draws from decades of research on how the human brain spends its mental energy, the many ways we become distracted, and how our capacity to focus fluctuates. In this guide, we’ll explore Mark’s different modes of attention, how digital media acts to break our concentration, and how Mark says we can reclaim our attention from the distractions of the modern world. We’ll also look at what other experts say affects attention, how to direct it, and whether distractions are something you can control.

(continued)...

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.

(Shortform note: If you fall into one of these categories, don’t assume that you have to change your personality—that may prove hard or impossible. Instead, as Timothy A. Pychyl writes in Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, you can simply pay attention to the traits you have and how they make you prone to distraction; then, decide how to change your response to distractions. For example, you might counter compulsive email checking by reminding yourself that the vast majority of emails you get don’t require a quick response. However, Pychyl warns that you can’t rely solely on willpower to overcome your natural reactions, so you should plan activities in your day to recharge your mental batteries, just as we’ll describe later in this guide.)

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.

(Shortform note: Though Mark chiefly blames digital media for our culture of distraction, not everyone agrees. In Indistractable, Nir Eyal argues that the real reasons we’re easily distracted are distressing internal emotional and sensory experiences, such as stressful work conditions, chronic fatigue, or relationship problems. External triggers, such as digital technology, are just avenues we use to escape from physical and emotional discomfort. Eyal says that without those internal triggers, we wouldn’t be driven to try to escape by checking our email or social media. If Eyal is right, then cutting back on those interruptions would simply lead us to seek another form of distraction. But as we’ll see, Mark’s research seems to suggest otherwise.)

Interruption’s Pros and Cons

Paradoxically, Mark’s research found that interruptions lead to some productivity gains. For instance, once we’ve been interrupted, we often try to make up for lost time by working even harder. Also, work that gets interrupted stays active in our memory for longer than tasks we’re able to complete, giving us longer to come up with novel and creative solutions to problems. For instance, say a colleague interrupts your work on a presentation and you don’t get back to it soon after. Your subconscious will continue mulling it over and may present you with some new ideas you wouldn’t have come up with if you hadn’t stopped.

(Shortform note: Research suggests there’s another benefit to the ever-shrinking amount of time modern workers are able to focus on one task. In addition to the productivity gains Mark mentions, having to cope with continual interruptions enables better task prioritization because our brains are learning to be more discriminating about what deserves our attention. This adaptation to the digital age helps us manage the overwhelming amount of information we’re presented with daily—in other words, interruptions are rewiring us to better discern what’s important amidst the world’s informational chaos.)

Nevertheless, Mark insists that the net result of interruptions is more negative than positive. In the end, any increase in productivity you experience due to interruptions also comes with higher stress, more time pressure, increased cognitive clutter, and depleted mental reserves. To demonstrate this, Mark conducted a study in which a group of workers were made to stop using email for a week. The results of the decrease in interruptions were striking—participants developed longer attention spans, felt less stressed, and spent more time engaged in mood-boosting direct interpersonal interactions.

(Shortform note: Mark isn’t alone in studying the negative impact of workplace interruptions. In A World Without Email, Cal Newport discusses how email is singularly corrosive to productivity and workplace satisfaction. Newport argues that most knowledge workers spend their days in constant, frantic, unnecessary communication instead of doing the jobs they were hired for. However, Newport’s proposed solutions are institutional—changing workflows, communication methods, and the nature of the jobs employees do. Unless you have the ear of upper management, you may have to adopt other strategies to cut down your daily distractions.)

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.

(Shortform note: Mark may be right to blame the pervasion of multitasking on our digital devices. In Make Time, tech industry insiders Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky confess to having been part of the problem by designing digital products to maximize clicks, likes, views, and downloads, stealing away users’ time and attention. When they realized the effects these products were having on their own lives, they began to look for ways to redirect their attention away from electronics and back toward their true aspirations.)

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.

(Shortform note: Other researchers have also studied the time penalties of multitasking. For example, in Eat That Frog!, business consultant Brian Tracy denies that there’s any such thing as multitasking at all—the best you can do is to switch your attention between different tasks while trying to remember where you were in each one. While Mark’s findings show a 25-minute “reset time” after each interruption, Tracy says that it only takes 17 minutes to refocus on a task, but that all those interruptions increase how much time you need to complete it by 500%. In contrast, when you work without interruption, you can cut the time required to finish by half.)

The Mental Toll of Multitasking

The negative impacts of multitasking on productivity and stress levels are well documented. Mark cites numerous studies showing that multitasking decreases performance, increases errors, and causes higher stress. Mark’s own research shows that when people are forced to multitask instead of being allowed to work on one thing at a time, their facial expressions betray higher rates of negativity and anger. Beyond its impact on personal productivity, this finding has negative implications for workplace dynamics: One person’s emotional state can spread to others, creating an environment wherestress and frustration spread like a virus.

(Shortform note: While the multitasking Mark describes may be unavoidable to some degree, you can manage it with a system known as kanban, first used in Japanese manufacturing. In Personal Kanban, Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria explain kanban as a visual tool for tracking tasks as they move through your workflow. In its most rudimentary version, kanban is a chart divided into three columns: ready, doing, and done. Being able to see all your tasks in one place helps you determine the right one to do now, making sure your energy is going where it will have the most impact. Kanban also helps you limit the number of tasks you’re doing at once, mitigating some of the emotional strain that Mark says multitasking causes.)

Nevertheless, the expectation that we should multitask has become so normalized that we start laying the groundwork for it when we’re young. More of children’s time is spent on devices and screens than ever before, and since their ability to ignore distractions isn’t yet fully developed, the attention-switching habit becomes ingrained early on. The effects of this continue into early adulthood—Mark’s research on college students shows they check social media over 100 times per day and have an average digital attention span of 48 seconds before switching their focus to another screen or app. Because of the mental wear-and-tear that results, any type of learning that requires focused attention can suffer.

(Shortform note: Despite Mark’s concerns that digital multitasking is harmful to young people, researchers haven't reached an agreement on whether digital media helps or hurts children, since its effects vary based on context and how young people are using it. While heavy media multitasking has been linked to problems with attention span, memory, and self-control, some research hints at possible cognitive benefits, such as improved visual processing and problem-solving skills. Age also plays a role—rapid-fire content might overwhelm younger children but can actually help older kids develop their cognitive skills.)

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.

Your Brain Online

While hyperlinks may indeed be similar to how the brain stores information, research suggests that internet use actively changes how your brain functions. In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr writes that because of how the brain alters itself with learning and experience, even as little as five hours online can cause new neural pathways to form new neural pathways. These new neural pathways are optimized to process fast-paced information, such as what the internet dishes out, while overwriting any neural connections that internet use suppresses, such as those that help to focus your attention.

Even worse, Carr suggests that internet use interrupts the process of memory creation. Normally, information enters your short-term memory first, but to retain it, your brain must transfer it into long-term memory storage. When you jump from thought to thought by association, as Mark describes, you’re accessing data in your long-term memory, but when you do the same on the internet, you don’t give your brain time to absorb those facts, and your understanding of the world grows shallower. In this way, Carr says that the internet doesn’t simply mimic human memory—we’re actively using it to outsource our memory.

Unconscious Surfing

To the founders of the internet, its limitless capacity to cross-pollinate information was a good thing, but they didn’t anticipate how much it would impair people’s ability to focus. Mark points out that like the mental state of mind-wandering, internet surfing isn’t usually goal-oriented and can begin without us consciously intending it to. The online world presents information in a way that allows for flexible thinking and encourages users to make creative connections, but it also provides a Pandora’s Box of potential distractions every time you log in.

(Shortform note: Though nearly everyone online has spent some time in aimless internet wandering, how and why we go about it is more varied than Mark suggests. A wide-ranging study of Wikipedia users reveals three distinct categories of internet surfers—those who follow any threads that spark their interest, those who go digging for specific bits of data, and those who seek to bridge divergent fields of study. Each of these “curiosity types” experience the internet differently, on a spectrum from the purely goal-oriented to the completely undirected.)

While we must accept some blame for spending hours in digital mazes, Mark emphasizes that our online behavior is covertly managed by algorithms designed to keep us distracted. It all began with websites collecting data to deliver personalized content and ads. Today, those algorithms are more sophisticated; they use data about your browsing habits to divine your personality and preferences so they can manipulate your attention with precision. Mark argues that these algorithms’ basic intent is to keep us engaged with content, steering us toward what news to read, what opinions to debate, and what products to buy.

(Shortform note: Beyond merely keeping us engaged with content and keeping us distracted, as Mark suggests, online algorithms may be subtly shaping the content available to us. In Filterworld, Kyle Chaka argues that an unintended side-effect of algorithms—such as those that suggest TikTok videos or songs on Spotify—is that content creators now feel pressured to design their creative output to increase the odds that algorithms recommend them. The result is a homogenized cultural landscape in which every video, song, and article is competing to conform to algorithmic expectations. Therefore, in addition to guiding your attention, algorithms drain the variety from the different things you might pay attention to.)

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.

(Shortform note: In addition to the pressure to stay engaged that Mark discusses, social media use has also been shown to promote low self-esteem and loneliness. In The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff argues that social media apps encourage extreme levels of social comparison, which harms feelings of self-worth, increases body judgment, and triggers more frequent instances of depression. Furthermore, psychologists say that social media platforms create a cycle of isolation by enticing us to connect with people through their apps rather than meet our friends and family face-to-face. In some respects, it may be that the way social media erodes our attention is the least of its problems.)

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.

(Shortform note: While social media hacks users’ social drives, it’s embedded itself so deeply in our culture that disconnecting can be hard. In James Acaster’s Guide to Quitting Social Media, he says that detaching from the online world left him feeling isolated since his ability to maintain friendships had become dependent on digital apps. Once offline, he had to rebuild his social circle and sense of community through in-person groups and interactive activities. He also had to make a deliberate effort to stay in touch with his family and friends and to stay informed about current events, without using social media as a crutch. However, he found that his offline relationships became more meaningful as a result.)

Take the Power (Mostly) Back

Given all the ways modern technology hijacks your attention, is trying to control your focus a lost cause? Not at all. Mark acknowledges that even though many external factors shape our behavior, we still retain some ability to choose how we act. The first step in reclaiming power over your attention is to become mindful of the internal and external factors that distract you. Then, learn to moderate your responses so that you’re less reactive to distraction’s tug and pull.

(Shortform note: Mark’s advice to be mindful of the urges that distract you takes practice, and mindfulness meditation may serve as a useful first step. In Mindfulness in Plain English, Bhante Gunaratana defines mindfulness as the ability to listen to your thoughts without being caught up in them. He argues that through meditation, you can learn to control your mind and rob the impulses that distract you of their power. There are many approaches to meditation you can use, for which Shortform’s Master Guide to Choosing a Meditation Practice provides a starting point.)

Mark explains that when you concentrate, your attention is goal-oriented, but the impulses that distract you aren’t, meaning they come from different areas of the brain. As we explained earlier, concentrating on a task physiologically changes sections of the brain, but only temporarily. When those changes fade, your ability to concentrate wears thin and you grow vulnerable to instinctive reactions, such as responding to social media notifications or giving in to the urge to snack instead of work. Mark says that it isn’t practical to fight your brain’s instincts indefinitely, and trying to do so can only lead to stress.

(Shortform note: Neuroscience suggests that Mark is right to say that you can’t always overcome your instincts. In A Thousand Brains, Jeff Hawkins argues that you have far less conscious control than you know. He explains that the brain’s neocortex, the seat of higher cognition and conscious thought, is composed of 150,000 “cortical columns” that each act as a mini-brain. The individual columns receive inputs, create mental models, and through a process akin to voting, arrive at a consensus about what you should do. Therefore, any time you have a conscious thought, it’s already been voted upon by tens of thousands of unconscious mini-brains.)

Work With Distraction, Not Against It

Instead of trying to control your every impulse, you should try to become more aware of your attentional state and your energy level so you can harness the dynamic nature of your attention and keep your self-control from slipping away entirely. For instance, Mark suggests finding logical stopping points in tasks that require steady concentration. If you schedule time to step away from a project so you can check your email or chat with a colleague, then you can minimize the wear and tear on your brain of trying to do several things at once. Another way to free up mental resources is to jot down details of things you leave unfinished so that they don’t live rent-free in your head and distract you from other priorities.

(Shortform note: In this section, Mark’s thoughts about scheduling your attention all apply on the micro level, but you can also steer away from distraction by including big-picture ideas. In Indistractable, Nir Eyal writes that you should schedule around three responsibilities—yourself, your relationships, and your work—as well as your values in each domain, whether that’s creativity, growth, or stronger personal connections. Your values represent what’s important to you, but a mismatch between your values and what you’re doing can easily trigger distraction. On the other hand, if your work and values align, it’s easier for you to maintain focused attention.)

Find the Balance

Most of all, Mark disputes the idea that constant productivity is a worthy goal. Instead, she advocates a balance between periods of deep concentration, more “mechanical” tasks, and breaks to let your mind recharge. To achieve this, she recommends practicing three skills: self-awareness, planning your time, and self-moderation.

Self-Awareness

To begin with, Mark suggests that you learn your mind’s natural rhythm—when does your ability to concentrate go up and down throughout the day? This is different for each person, despite what our assigned work schedules might suggest. Some people concentrate best in the morning, while others find it easiest later in the day or at night. Also, which weekday it is makes a difference—some of us are more productive on Monday, while others need several days to ramp up. Once you figure out your personal rhythm, you’ll be able to schedule your high-concentration projects for the times when you have the most energy to spend.

(Shortform note: Mark directs readers to online tests that help determine your mental energy rhythm, but you can also take a more methodical approach. In The Productivity Project, Chris Bailey spent three weeks charting his energy levels hourly from 6 A.M. to 9 P.M. He also cut stimulants like alcohol and caffeine, varied his workout times, consumed little sugar, and woke up without an alarm. His results revealed his body’s natural highs, lows, and what he referred to as his “Biological Prime Time,” the time in which he had the most energy to use.)

However, Mark also suggests that you take the time to consciously observe your daily activities and ask how important they are. Are you wasting time on things that don't contribute to your overall goals? Do you gain something from your time on social media, or do you simply check it out of habit? You may find that some of the “mindless” things you do bring you joy and replenish your energy, while some of the “important” things you do aren’t providing a return on your mental investment.

(Shortform note: Mark’s advice to evaluate everything in your schedule may seem daunting, but in Essentialism, Greg McKeown fleshes it out in more detail. He says to begin by exploring the wide range of options you could be pursuing, determining which are most important based on your personal goals, and eliminating the rest. Rather than trying to do this all at once, McKeown suggests you make this kind of reflection an automatic part of your routine—this allows you tol remove inessentials from your life as they crop up. What Mark might add to McKeown’s system is a reminder that rest and relaxation are essential, not something to be discarded.)

Planning

Mark writes that once you’ve figured out the patterns of your concentration and decided which tasks are most productive, you can design your day to optimize your cognitive resources instead of just scheduling tasks. This includes incorporating “downtime”—periods of rest or easy activities that help replenish your mental capacity. For instance, if your plan includes spending two hours working on an urgent report, perhaps schedule a long lunch or a walk in the park immediately after instead of planning to plow straight ahead into a meeting or a huge stack of emails.

(Shortform note: The mental down time Mark talks about doesn’t have to be idle—physical activity restores the mind too. In Energize, Simon Alexander Ong emphasizes that physical exercise releases mood-lifting hormones that increase your overall energy. However, exercise won’t lift your spirits if it’s something that you dread, so it’s important to find forms of exercise that you actually like. Ong recommends that you give yourself a variety of exercise options to choose from, and also that you make exercise a can’t-skip part of your daily routine.)

Mark also stresses that when planning your day, you should consider the emotional impact of your to-do list. While some tasks are uplifting, others can bring you down, even if they don’t require a lot of mental energy. For instance, if you have to make a brief but unpleasant phone call, schedule a pleasant reset before your next assignment. In other words, don’t just think about what you want to accomplish for the day—plan for how you want to feel at the end of it. You’ll be able to maintain your attention better if you strategically intersperse things you like to do around the things you dread.

(Shortform note: Though Mark is largely talking about how to lessen the negative impact of spending attention on things you dislike, the flipside is that you should prioritize things you enjoy—not just at work, but outside of it as well. In Indistractable, Nir Eyal insists that you should schedule regular time with your children, your partner, and your friends. Without maintenance, your relationships easily dissipate, so your plans with friends and family need to be regular, set events in your schedule, not simply to-do list items. If you make this time commitment, it can provide just the emotional boost Mark argues you need.)

Self-Moderation

The final piece to the puzzle of taking control of your attention is to learn how to gently steer yourself back when you’ve lost focus. While there are digital apps that can help, such as programs that limit internet access or timers that restrict your email usage, Mark is leery of these since they’re a crutch that prevents you from learning real self-control. Instead, she recommends learning to resist your urges to switch from task to task by reminding yourself how much better you feel when you see things through to completion.

(Shortform note: Mark’s advice on how to restore your focus relies on positive self-messaging, but many of us are more likely to hear a negative “inner critic” scolding us for getting off track. In Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?, Julie Smith says you can silence this inner critic by learning to be kind and compassionate to yourself. If this is difficult, Smith recommends journaling, going to therapy, and talking to loved ones as ways to get to know yourself better. Once you can embrace every aspect of yourself, even the parts that give in to distraction, you can work on turning down the volume on your inner critic’s voice.)

Mark also suggests that you can plant triggers to bring you out of distracting behaviors. For instance, if you plan to take a break by playing games on your phone, you can schedule it for 10 minutes before you have to leave for an important meeting. That way, you still get the recharge from relaxing without being lured into the endless, wasteful spiral of “one more minute on this game.” In other words, if you plan time to recharge, build an on-ramp back into your schedule to help you fight the urge to be unproductive.

(Shortform note: A slightly different approach to break you out of fun, unproductive time is to make work itself enjoyable by gamifying it in some way. In Feel-Good Productivity, Ali Abdaal says to do this by asking yourself, “If your life were a video game, how would you approach it?” Would you challenge yourself to find the most efficient way to complete each “quest,” seek out opponents for the thrill of competition, or simply enjoy exploring new ideas? People spend hours playing video games because they’re designed to hold your attention. Abdaal says that if you bring a gaming mindset to work, your job can captivate you in the same way —in effect, doing what Mark suggests by distracting you from unproductive distractions.)

In conclusion, Mark emphasizes that while you can't remove every distraction, you can engage your limited attention more wisely. Computers, the internet, and smartphones aren’t going away, and though they were intended to enhance our capabilities, they often exhaust and distract us instead. Nevertheless, Mark insists that we’re still at the dawn of the digital age, and she’s optimistic that we still have the power to shape it. If you take back the power to direct your attention and balance your overall cognitive load as you navigate the digital world, you can lead a mentally healthier life without sacrificing productivity and creativity.

(Shortform note: Though Mark says it’s futile to try to remove all digital interruptions from your life, in Make Time, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky suggest a variety of ways to do precisely that, such as deleting most of the apps off your phone, strictly limiting your email use, and heavily curtailing your TV time. Knapp and Zeratsky stress that you should be intentional about how you use technology, especially when it comes to phones and computers, so that it serves you and not the other way around.)