CULTURE
Can You Stare At A Blank Wall For Ten Minutes?
Attention comes in short supply
This is a blank wall. Look at it. Relax, put your phone down, and forget about that email from work. You haven’t been answering it for two days. It can wait another ten minutes.
There’s just you and the wall, and your thoughts. Everything is crumbled and chaotic, and the brain slowly raises its eyebrow, not sure what exactly you are up to. Soon it feels like an eternity, when in fact it has been less than half a minute. Am I really that impatient?
Well, it hardly has anything to do with patience. The action is meaningless, and that’s what bothers your conscience. It can even make you angry. Just imagine the number of reels you could scroll through instead of sitting here like a fool.
And then you just watch the wall until you finally can’t take it anymore.
My colleague and I developed this routine to practice concentration. Whenever we found ourselves easily distracted, we faced a blank wall and sat there, staring at it. The goal was to last ten minutes. Sounds like a walk in the park. But I assure you, in reality, it’s hell. It also proved to be a great way to clear thoughts and finish the work uninterrupted by anything the internet has to offer.
Recently, I’ve noticed that ten minutes became unreachable, and my record of seventeen minutes now seems like a made-up thing. My attention span has reduced, and I know exactly the reason why.
I watched “Maestro” last night. A debut from Bradley Cooper now as the director, about Leonard Bernstein, with a significant focus on his wife and her struggles. The film is good, emotional, and strong. But it is also two hours long and has the pace of a turtle riding a bus during rush hour. I love movies — the magic, the possibilities, the imagery. But could someone not interested in the art of filmmaking or music sit through a long, slow film about a legendary conductor/composer?
Should the content of the future be considerably shorter?
Twenty years ago, that wouldn’t even be a question. Since then, the evolution of social media and content creation has significantly reduced the average content length. Short formats became popular, eventually causing the industry to adapt. If it’s an action movie — there should be action everywhere. If it’s a blockbuster comedy — the audience has to laugh every minute.
Faster, people! Watch, watch!
During our travels, my friends and I try to have at least one movie night. I’ve noticed those who are involved in social media actively — making a travel blog or a foodie Instagram — grab their phones about two minutes into the film. That’s shorter than Brendan Fraser’s appearance in “Killers of The Flower Moon.” It doesn’t mean the film is boring. It means their attention span is reduced to roughly one hundred and twenty seconds.
Social networks, especially video-oriented ones like TikTok or Instagram, demanded the content to be fast and as informative as possible, limiting the timing to one minute or so. A few years later, we have an audience used to receiving information in short packages.
Already there are talks that, in the future, we will watch shows with minute-long episodes, and the normal length of a feature film will go down to one hour. I know for a fact Christopher Nolan will fight it vigorously, putting together his leviathans. Still, it’s alarming at best.
My concern is not limited to the audience’s perception. The decrease in attention span affects production too. Shorter timing demands faster production, resulting in, well, the reduction of quality.
With things going as they are now, we are probably facing some changes in the length of movies and the thickness of books. The real question is to what extent. Will a novel be reduced to ten thousand words? Is twenty minutes enough to show every side of the characters, their suffering, their triumphs? Can you pack Leonard Bernstein’s life in a reel, and should you?
I choose to work on my attention and concentration. Be as it may, it doesn’t mean I have to comply as a reader or a viewer. The size of a book shouldn’t be scary to the point of abandoning it. And the movie can be as long as the director and screenwriters see it.
Writing this, I had to stand up and face a wall. Six minutes fifteen seconds. Less than I thought, but it’s not a competition.
It’s a practice.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this story, you can always follow me for more. Maybe somebody will even give you a cookie. Who knows, the world is full of surprises!
