We are distracted every 44 seconds - how do we cope?
“If we look at history, it always will speed up... so being able to know how to focus when it's necessary, I think is a very, very valuable skill to have."
While it feels like our attention spans are deteriorating in a world that scatters it here, there, and everywhere, our brain is very adept at focusing.
The problem is we're paying attention to too much, says Oscar de Bos, co-author of a new book Focus On-Off.
“So, the brain tries to decide every second what is the most important thing I have to focus on, and it does that incredibly well.”
Research shows we are distracted every 44 seconds.
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But with so much information coming at us the brain struggles to cope, he explains.
“It has a hard time keeping up, and it just switches to everything, trying to make sense of it all.”
He calls the tsunami of information we constantly receive a “modern jungle”. While our brains naturally adapt to this changing information environment, the result is leaky concentration.
There are, however, strategies to combat this, the Dutch researcher told RNZ’s Sunday Morning.
Doodling, drawing, or listening to familiar music can help keep focus while performing mundane tasks, he says.
“I like this example that when you're driving with some music on, everything goes well. But if you have to park the car backwards, then you have like the feeling of, ok, I have to stop the music now because it's too overwhelming, it's too many stimuli at the same time.”
He is also a fan of to-do lists.
“Once you get older, and especially now with the internet and all the stimuli that we get thrown at us, it's a very hard task to do, to remember everything that you have to do.”
We experience this as a kind of weight, he says, which is another distraction.
“You will interrupt yourself all the time with these memories. So, you need a good list that you can trust, so your brain kind of can offload this task and doesn't remind you of all these things anymore. I think if you achieve that, then you cut your distractions almost in half.”
If you’re tired - don’t be tempted to scroll on your cellphone, he says, it blocks the brain from entering a “default mode network”. This is when the brain processes all information we got during the day.
It’s hardly surprising we feel so scattered he says. US researcher Gloria Mark has found distraction levels are increasing exponentially.
“I think it was in 2004, she found out that we were distracted every 150 seconds, which was already crazy, and then now we're down to every 44 seconds.”
Behind this finding lies another problem for our beleaguered brains, he says.
“Every time you task switch, your brain is kind of split in half, so one half of the brain is still trying to get rid of the information or trying to place it somewhere, while your other half of the brain is trying to understand the new information coming towards you, and in these minutes, you're, I like to say, a bit less smart, you make a lot of mistakes.”
It’s unlikely the speed of life will slow any time soon, he says.
“If we look at history, it always will speed up. So that’s why I think the skill of focus, being able to know how to focus when it's necessary, I think is a very, very valuable skill to have nowadays.”
