Are attention spans getting shorter?
I don’t know about you, but I’m seeing less ability to concentrate lately, both in others and in myself. This probably isn’t my imagination. While not conclusive, there’s evidence that attention spans are shortening – or at least people feel like they are.
I’ve observed this as a qualitative researcher. It takes more effort to keep people focused. As a result, I’m shortening focus group and interview duration, conducting smaller groups and breaking conversations into shorter sections. Others in marketing research are seeing this trend as well.
Here’s an interesting question: what do we mean by ‘attention span?’ If you’re looking for a single, agreed-upon definition, forget it – there isn’t one. Cognitive scientists generally see attention as the capacity to concentrate on a stimulus before that focus lapses.
Why are attention spans getting shorter? There’s no definitive answer, but our world now contains increasingly more distractions than it once did. It’s more cluttered and complicated, and we are constantly stimulated by mass and social media. I wrote recently about multitasking, which is practically synonymous with distraction, and there’s evidence that people are trying to do this more.
However you define it– and whatever its origin– this trend presents two challenges: improving our own ability to focus and dealing with distraction in others.
When it comes to improving your own attention span, there’s lots of advice out there, including something called the Pomodoro Technique, cognitive exercises and meditation. The thing that helps me the most is controlling my environment– meaning removing distractions and minimizing interruptions. A change of scenery every few hours also helps me maintain focus. This is why you’ll regularly find me working at one of our many local coffee establishments.
As for the challenge of dealing with short attention spans in others, here are a few tips that work for me:
Manage your own expectations. Realize there’s a limit to how long you can command somebody’s full attention.
Break conversations into short chunks. When conducting qualitative, my practice is that if each party in a conversation has spoken two or three times, it’s time to change the subject. This also works well in social and business contexts.
Control the environment. Limit distractions – don’t try to get somebody to focus when they’re not able to do that. That might mean turning off the TV, going into another room or having everyone put down their phone.
Set goals. If everybody knows exactly what’s on the agenda (such as agreeing on where to have brunch), it will be easy to stay focused until that goal is achieved.
I’ve come to believe that attention is a series of habits. Some habits we need to develop, such as controlling our environment and setting attention goals. Some we need to break, such as always having our phones in our hands and trying to multitask. By paying attention to attention, we can make our world more manageable.
Thanks to Roben Allong, Chris Kann, Jessica Kurth, Abby Leafe, Nancy Ellen Cohn Rich, Rob Riester and Jay Zaltzman for their input on this topic.