Attention, Our Most Valuable Resource

At the beginning of 2021, I was feeling particularly tired and burned out. Despite counting myself lucky (I did not lose any friend or relative to COVID), 2020 had been extremely demanding at a professional level; my work days were filled with emails, chat app notifications, and never-ending online meetings. I visited a therapist & coach and asked him for help. I thought we would be engaging in insightful conversations about my career goals, productivity hacks and other tips on how to manage my workplace relationships. Instead, we ended up discussing my life priorities and the different ways in which I could reclaim my attention for myself. In particular, that coach encouraged me to modify both my morning and evening routine by reducing the amount of external stimulus as much as possible. In the morning, this means not turning on my smartphone until at least 60 minutes after I woke up (ideally, 120 minutes) and use that time to practice meditation, work out and engage in an activity that gives me pleasure (in my case, reading). In the evening, it means turning off my smartphone 2 hours before going to bed and decreasing as much as possible anything highly stimulating.

I have been trying my best to follow his advice since early 2021, and it has been transformative. Needless to say, I continue to struggle with it, and I fail more often than I would like to; but I have experienced enough improvements to be? convinced of the profound importance of attention and how we deal with it. This is in fact the reason why I remain committed to proactively reclaiming my attention on a daily basis and why I find this topic so crucial. It is hard though, and not just for me: as unbelievable as it may sound, studies show our attention span has decreased from an average of 2.5 minutes in 2003 to one of 47 seconds now. It is a striking number, showing us the degree to which things have changed with the increased digitization of our societies in general and the nature of our work and office culture in particular. The following articles and podcasts have helped me deepen my understanding of attention as well as broaden the scope of it. Attention is one treasure we all have at our disposal for a more fulfilling, satisfying life at a personal, spiritual, social, and professional level:

a) Tired? Distracted? Burn out? Listen to this (The Ezra Klein Show, episode published on January 5th, 2024).? article by Ross Andersen published on August 21st, 2023). In this episode, Ezra interviews Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the book “Attention Span”. As Ezra puts it, Gloria Mark “is one of the few people who’s deeply studied the way our attention works, how that’s been changing, and what we can do to stop frittering our attention budgets away”. This podcast episode is an excellent, eye-opening discussion on what happens in our mind and body when we lose our ability to govern our attention and what we can do about it. In particular, Gloria and Ezra describe the multiple ways in which the glorification of productivity, together with our increasingly digital lives where our eyes and brains are constantly bombarded with stimulus, leaves us exhausted and completely drained. The interviewee describes the importance of nurturing our “attentional wellbeing” and encourages all of us to pay attention to ourselves so we can pay attention to our loved ones (a direct connection with the second to last article I recommend in this post, letter D).?

b) An Exhausting Year In (And Out Of) The Office (The New Yorker, article by Cal Newport; published on December 27th, 2023). The author walks us through the evolution of office culture for knowledge workers from 2020 until now. In 2021 we saw the phenomena experts called “The Great Resignation” after thousands of knowledge workers left their jobs in search of more fulfilling ones; in 2022 came the term “Quiet Quitting”, which was used to describe the attitude of “checking out” of work and doing the absolute minimum due to lack of motivation; the author suggests that in 2023 we experienced “The Great Exhaustion”, where knowledge workers expressed a deep sense of tiredness and burn out directly related to the dynamics of modern office, knowledge-based work. At the heart of this trend, the author hypothesizes, there is a vast increase in digital communication (online meetings, email, chat apps, etc.), which leaves us constantly distracted and so in desperate need for some focused work time.?

c) Powerful Forces Are Fracking Our Attention. We Can Fight Back (The New York Times, article by D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh and Peter Schmidt; published on November 23rd, 2023). The authors expose the deeply troubling consequences of our broken attention and urge education institutions (from elementary schools to college campuses) to make Attention the subject itself; that is to say, to help us all learn how to exercise our attention and reclaim it for ourselves. They describe the group exercises they have developed themselves as liberal arts college professors for such a purpose.

d) What The Longest Study On Human Happiness Found Is The Key To a Good Life (The Atlantic, article by Robert Walding and Marc Schulz; published on January 19th, 2023). Walding and Schulz are two renowned American scientists (a psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist, respectively); together they run the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest in-depth longitudinal study on human life ever done. In this article they share the most profound finding of this 75-year research study: “Good relationships lead to health and happiness; the trick is that those relationships must be nurtured”. What specific resource do we need for such nurturing to take place? Our attention, which is sadly more scattered than ever.?

e) Are Smartphones Bad For Us? Five World Experts Answer (The Guardian, article by Madeleine Aggeler; published on January 10th, 2024). In this article, the author interviews five renowned scholars from the fields of psychology and psychiatry who have studied the impact of smartphones on children, adolescents and adults. As you can imagine, smartphones have a direct impact on our attention and well-being; for the most part, they are designed to capture our attention as much as possible. Most of the experts agree on describing smartphones as powerful tools that can be used in positive and negative ways: you can video chat with a close friend who lives in a different country, or you can isolate yourself from a nice conversation with your parents by constantly checking your phone.

In the early morning, while I sit on my couch and read on my ebook with my phone turned off, time seems to slow down and my ability to focus and pay attention deepens. It is a great feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction. I later turn off my phone and leave for work, where I sit down in front of my 2 screens and turn on my laptop. Like most people, I usually do work stuff on a web browser tab while I have at least 5 other tabs open; I check LinkedIn, my email and my Asana inbox way too often, and resisting to check my phone for new whatsapp messages every time it vibrates becomes harder and harder as the day goes by (I have been leaving my phone at my desk when I go have meetings in a conference room; while it feels liberating at times, it also makes me feel rather naked). There are still times in which this “always online, always multitasking” work mode makes me feel hyped, as if I were? being super productive; but I know it is just stress and acceleration; I know it will eventually lead to feelings of exhaustion and emptiness. As much as I know it though, walking away from it is extremely hard.

As the articles I shared above expose, our reality as knowledge workers is that digital communications (mostly email thread and chatting apps) have increasingly become ubiquitous, both during our work hours and outside of them. The balance between digital communications and meaningful, deep work is off the rails for most knowledge workers, leaving us tired and with a feeling of unaccomplishment. Moreover, our current office culture rewards the “always online, always multitasking” mantra while discouraging digital and non-digital breaks to help us rest and recover our focus and attention. Both Gloria Mark and Cal Newport call this a toxic work culture, and urge corporations to introduce new norms, habits and values (decrease online meetings and email use, eliminate chat apps unless they are essential, normalize taking breaks during office hours, etc.). Both experts remind us that creativity requires a stress-free brain, which is incompatible with an ever large proportion of digital communications during office hours.

If we leave work feeling drained and exhausted, did we do our best work? And once we leave the office, can we truly nurture the relationships with the people we love? What about with our inner-self? I know for sure this 2024 I will continue to strengthen and protect my attention well-being, and I will do my best at work and outside of it to shape our environments in ways that help everyone reclaim their attention.?

And you? What is your relationship with attention? Do any of the personal and professional struggles I shared sound familiar to you? If yes, what has worked for you? I truly hope you find these articles and podcasts interesting and thought-provoking. Of course, if you happen to know of other articles, books or resources on this topic that have helped you in your journey towards better attention well-being, please share them here!