“I tried to live, but I got distracted.” — this is our attention crisis.
Are we exercising our brains to shorten our attention span, is the attention economy disconnecting us, or what exactly is the problem here?
Let’s start with a couple of thoughts about our interconnected disconnected society and what I believe we should do about it now.
Generally, I have a curious, sceptical and observing mind, always looking for new things to connect and pleased when the day ends with something I didn’t know the day before. In other words trying to observe, explain and understand our society with all its qualities and weird absurd behaviors thrills me.
STOLEN FOCUS
This is why for the last couple of days I reduced my screentime and I read “Stolen Focus” a real physical book with paper pages by Johann Hari. For me he is an exceptional writer and I can highly recommend his book. He explains why we are constantly distracted and what we should do to win back our concentration, be more creative and engage in meaningful relationships. Johann travelled more than 40’000 miles and interviewed the global leading experts in the field. He shares thought-provoking and proven take aways to reclaim our focus and improve quality of life. In his book he explains that our habits, technology, media consumption, crisis after crisis and the pace of our society are only a couple of things which lead to lack purpose and energy.
PAYING ATTENTION
In case you are still paying attention stick with me and let’s start with some facts before I lose you. :)
· According to recent studies our youth is no longer able to pay attention to one thing for more than 65 seconds on average
· Our workforce can no longer stick to a single task without interruption for more than 1 hour
· Once we leave a task due to distraction, we need on average 23 minutes to get back to the same level of focus
So my question is, how do we solve urgent problems, innovate and connect to people around us if we twitch and twerk our minds all the time unable to pay attention to things that really matter?
It does sound like we have a systemic problem here, which is partly driven by big tech companies and dopamine kicking medias — sometimes it feels like our society has been covered with itching powder and is literally paying with their attention.
That’s why I like the way Johann describes it. He emphasizes that it is not only about individual responsability but about collective responsability to deal with the deeper factors and have a systemic positive impact.
The question is how can we start without being overwhelmed or distracted?
ONLINE VS. OFFLINE
Bingo — let’s start with the gate to heaven and hell — our smartphones.
On average we touch them 2617 times a day. Twitter makes us feel like the whole world is obsessed with our little egos — it loves us, hates us and talks about us right now. But why do we think the short, fast, heated and mostly irrelevant contents matter?
Instagram makes us feel everyone around us has a better lifestyle, more money, more vacation and looks better — urging us to exercise more, buy more stuff we don’t need and spend more time doing retakes to stage what isn’t there and compete while our real life doesn’t receive the attention it deserves.
Do we still believe by the end of our life in our deathbeds we’ll be sitting and counting likes and retweets to take our last breaths with pride? If we do, there might be some truth in our distraction.
TIME TO REWIRE
It’s time to rewire, manifest healthy micro habits and focus on things that matter to us. This can start with technology and media moderation, continue with spending more time in nature, and end with laying down our egos and sharing more love with people around us rather than competing. But most importantly it starts with paying attention, being curious and perceiving things with all our senses.
There is no single truth, what matters is to figure out what we love, what energizes us and what makes us smile without interruptions. Let’s aim to be curious explorers rather than distracted consumers.
If we patiently learn to pay attention, we will be able to sharpen our senses and unexpected things happen. This will liberate us from endless streams of notifications, emails, social media updates and other distractions.
It’s time to understand that this constant bombardment of information is not only overwhelming but also harmful to our mental and emotional wellbeing.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Let’s become more curious, courageous, authentic and connect to people around us whenever we can.
Make eye contact, smile more and offer your genuine help on the street. This is how we truly can appreciate the real world offline and claim back our presence. This presence will gift us with more creativity, improved relationships, and meaningful live experiences worth not posting.
If you’re still with me but have no time to read the book “stolen focus” now, here you can check Johann Hari online and listen to his interview for one uninterrupted hour.
You made it. Thank you for paying attention.
I invite you to connect with people around you and discuss this topic to find meaningful actionable improvements for your own life.
