Fast Forward

The attention span of a modern human being is comparable to the attention span of a goldfish or if you believe the research that was conducted recently it’s even less than the that.
You see the proves everywhere — just look at the statistics of your articles. If it’s a 2 minute read article the percentage of the people who read it in its entirety lies around 40%. I’m talking about the articles people find interesting. The statistics of the not interesting ones are even worse.
We live in a society that will accomplishing something just by clicking on this like button. I wouldn’t even call it a society anymore. Nearly everyone lives in its own “bubble society” that’s created out of the networks she’s in.
It’s very comfortable — you can create the bubble that you like, blocking everyone and everything that doesn’t fit your worldview. Finally it feels like home, you never had-it’s nice to live inside of your own artificial cocoon.
The technology that was initially built to open the whole world to us backfired big time. Instead it gave us the tools to create a myriad of disconnected societies that lead to the lowest self esteem once the “matrixed” individuals encounter the life outside of their bubbles. Broken dreams lead to disappointment and further disintegration.
The inability to concentrate affects our lives tremendously. It gets nearly impossible to set any valuable goals and achieve them. Whenever something doesn’t go as planned, we give up and look for an instant gratification — aka. constant search for another like. It feels like you can achieve something very fast without doing too much. Likes feel the void but only very short-term, so that you have to go get another dose of those likes to keep your motivation up.
Pictures are easy, stories are a different animal though. Be careful, whenever you see a clap or a like on your story, it doesn’t mean that it has been read. From my experience around 60% of the people who reacted to your story haven’t read it at all. The other 20% barely read the half of your story. 10% read more that half and other 10% maybe were able to finish it.
It’s quite a disturbing statistic. As of today we almost lost the ability to even consume content. For many of us reading the heading seems enough to feel as if we read the whole article. You also start seeing it a lot whenever you try to have a profound conversation with people.
How do we get off the “instant gratification” train? Good question and a hard one as well. You could argue and say-”delete all your social network accounts” but does it really help you focus- that’s questionable.
It will sound really cheesy but meditation can really help. Just don’t expect it to work after the first 5 minutes — it won’t. You have to invest your time if you want it to work. But, please, don’t take it extremely seriously and try to avoid the self-blame if it doesn’t work as you expected.
What works for me is running-without music or any other potential distraction. It really helps me to focus on a certain problem and it’s one of the best ways for me to focus and unstuck.
Reading a book can help boost your concentration. And it’s also a really fun activity to do that doesn’t feel like an exercise. Try to pick up an old-school book — the one that’s printed on paper. And put your phone away when you’re reading. Try to keep the distraction level to an absolute minimum.
- Stop liking without reading
- Stop scanning, start reading
- Read more books
- Get offline
- Exercise — climbing, running, hiking, surfing (whatever works for you)
- Meditate (at least give it a try)
