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

Close The Other Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds stupid, but it works for me. When I really want to concentrate on one thing, I kill everything else. Any browser tabs I have open that don't relate to what I'm doing, my email client, remenants of other stuff I've been working on lately. Sometimes I throw my ear buds in but have no music playing (they do a good job at passive noise cancelling). I also clear off my physical desk. I'm pretty keen on scribbling notes while I work.. so my desk is usually full of sheets of graph paper. Sounds lame, but starting with a fresh slate has a focusing effect on me.

Note that this is only when I explicitly decide I really want to have all my concentration on something difficult. Most of the time I've got dozens of unrelated things open, several emails an hour about stuff not even remotely relevant to me, and the usual office background chatter (some of which I enjoy and contribute to) yet still manage just fine. To be honest, I don't think I'd want to work in the kind of sterile intently focused and completely silent environment that some of our more introverted slashdoters crave. It might be more efficient, but it's no way to live.

My gut reaction to the articles points on ones favorite music being distracting is to call BS. Stuff I've heard dozens of times works as background music regardless. I tend to just leave my music on random throughout the day, and despite having a nice mixture of classic and progressive rock, metal, and even some chiptune stuff, you could probably stop me at any point and I wouldn't be able to tell you what I was just listening to. I actually just tried it and yup.. no idea without looking (it was Silent Lucidity by Queensryche, which is reasonably distinctive).

We all unconsciously know this

[Sir_Eptishous]

Everyone in our modern age of flitting/fleeting/browsing/tweeting knows intuitively how much our attention spans are being ravaged.
This is another one of those "we need empirical data to prove what everyone already knows", like studies on the differences between men and women, how peoples behaviors are affected by wealth, etc;
We can chalk it up in the "no shit sherlock" category.

FTFA:

This is perhaps because there is relatively little research available about the impact of websites like Twitter and Facebook, or games like Candy Crush, that seem to be deliberately aimed at keeping us constantly engaged, to the detriment of work.

I have to don my tinfoil cap now and surmise that in all liklihood, it isn't in the best interest of Google, Facebook, Apple or the rest to point out that yes, using our "products" and living this fast and loose, jittered-stimmed out existence of tweets, posts, statuses, etc isn't in your best interest, even if your best excuse is the usual "but this is how I stay current with my family"

What we are creating ladies and gentlemen is a generation of people who will HAVE TO HAVE computers and AI run things for them, because their attention span and critical thinking will be in the toilet.

Removing my tinfoil cap...

Interesting work makes focus easy

[chihowa]

What tricks do you use to keep yourself on task?

I know that this trick isn't possible for everybody, but I find that actually working on something interesting leads to far fewer distractions. When I'm working on something I like, I don't care when a new email arrives and I don't have any interest in hitting Slashdot. (I am not working on something interesting at the moment.) Difficult work (either mentally or physically) also seems to makes it harder to get distracted.

Maybe people's jobs are just getting more boring and cluttered with seemingly worthless tasks.

Simple, stop the IM, Email, and walk-up spam.

[thedarb]

Oh don't know, but if I could, you know, work through a ticket to completion without interruption, that would be great!

* Boss promotes too many tickets at once to the same priority. Meaning you work 3,4,5 or more tasks at the same time with similar time tables.
* People with tickets given a lower priority IM you again and again, and you keep telling them they are a priority 2 or 3... And until all the p0 and p1's are gone, you'll never even get a chance to look at it. Take it up with the boss if you want a higher priority.
* Dev and QA email threads you don't need to be on (yet, maybe) spamming your inbox. But you need to check if they actually are asking you something now, so you stop to read it.
* Walk ups. - Same as IM.

Let people focus on a task and get it done. If they get blocked, let them tell you they are blocked, and they can move onto another task until the first one becomes unblocked. It really can be that simple, if people will let it.