Technology and Ever-Falling Attention Spans

An anonymous reader writes: The BBC has an article about technology's effect on concentration in the workplace. They note research finding that the average information worker's attention span has dropped significantly in only a few years. "Back in 2004 we followed American information workers around with stopwatches and timed every action. They switched their attention every three minutes on average. In 2012, we found that the time spent on one computer screen before switching to another computer screen was one minute 15 seconds. By the summer of 2014 it was an average of 59.5 seconds." Many groups are now researching ways to keep people in states of focus and concentration. An app ecosystem is popping up to support that as well, from activity timing techniques to background noise that minimizes distractions. Recent studies are even showing that walking slowly on a treadmill while you work can have positive effects on focus and productivity. What tricks do you use to keep yourself on task?

Comments

Re:Close The Other Stuff

[SnapShot]

I can't bring myself to close tabs. I find myself with my hand shaking over the 'x' in the browser like a junkie trying to flush his last hit down the toilet. What if there's a comment that's really interesting? Or, worse, what if someone is wrong on the internet? What if I want to re-read that article? How will I find it again? I opened up that Stack Overflow page for a reason. I better leave it open until I remember what it was. Of course I can't close the gmail tab, what if there's an important email. Better leave twitter up because, reasons. Any new articles on Reddit? Oh, yeah, that was that Medium article I meant to read. Let me finish up writing this comment on Slashdot.

Just maybe?

[Higaran]

Once people realized you were timing them, they started to do everything quicker because they thought it would make themselves look good.

Delicious irony

[sideslash]

I am loving reading all these responses explaining how people avoid distractions, even while succumbing to the distraction of posting on reading and posting on Slashdot.

(Yeah yeah, I know, maybe they're in a different time zone... I would bet money the majority are still in their working hours. Including myself.)

I use two monitors

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I use one window to log into slashdot and keep it always in focus and on-top, and maximized so that it gets 100% of my attention. The other window is for distracting things like hacking out code, building, running test cases, updating rally etc etc. My attention span to slashdot has increased to nearly 30 minutes now.