By James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Your attention span is the amount of time you can stay focused on a task. The intensity of focus varies from person to person, and from task to task. People who want to become great at a skill seek to focus their attention so intensely they refer to that state as being as “in the zone.”
55% of web viewers spend less than 15 seconds on a web page, about the time it takes to read the above paragraph. That means everything I write from now on will be ignored by most people. For those with ultra-short attention spans, you can jump over the following explanatory text, and go directly to the section at the bottom for the rating system I’m proposing.
Few people ever have the kind of attention spans to get into the zone, but we all wish we could be more successful at accomplishing our goals, and that means strengthening our attention span. That’s bucking the trend though, since we seem to be evolving towards more and more activities that require shorter and shorter attention spans. If you’re still reading, you’ve got more focus than 99% of the average web reader.
Writing the above took several minutes of my attention span. I am easily distracted, especially since I work at a computer connected to the internet. Nicholas Carr makes a case in his book The Swallows that we’re all ruining our attention spans by adapting to the internet with computers, tablets, laptops and smartphones. He also describes several scientific studies that show that reading from hypertext pages, with lots of multimedia, is also bad for our attention spans and our ability to learn. That’s why I’m only providing plain text today.
As more of my friends, who are not young by the way, switch to texting and tweeting, I wonder if Carr isn’t right. Most of my friends claim they haven’t the time or interest to read by blogs, most of which can be read in five minutes, and many have admitted they have started a particular blog but their mind drifted away before they could finish. I can accept being boring might cause them to lose their interest, but I also have to wonder if my friends have deteriorating attention spans. I do think it’s amusing that I can listen to my friends ramble on for twenty minutes at a go, but they can’t scan something I’ve written that will take them five minutes or less.
Writing a blog, which is where I push the limits of my attention span, usually requires 1-2 hours, but sometimes if I get in the zone, I can push to 3-4. However, I’m often distracted by hunger, thirst and the need to pee. I’m guessing at my best, I can usually stay on task for an hour, and on some days push it closer to two. There are varying degrees of attention. Most people have no trouble sitting for two hours in a movie theater with their attention fully enraptured by the film. Of course it helps that we’re all sitting in a dark room where it’s very rude to talk, and the object of our attention is uniquely fascinating. Can you sit equally still at home watching the same movie on TV?
Last night I started studying an old algebra book, and I was able to stay on task for about 12 minutes – and it was hard, very hard. I had to really push myself to get that far. Each morning I cook, eat breakfast and clean up, and that takes 15-20 minutes, but it’s easy and pleasant. We can focus easier on our older routines, but its hard to keep our attention on learning something new. Carr’s book also explains why that’s true too. Our brain is very plastic. We call it plastic because the brain can reshape its neural pathways to learn new routines. But we can also think of it as plastic because it can mold a new stable shape around a new routine. You’re capable of developing new habits, but those habits hold their shape and have a certain resistance to reshaping. It’s both hard to create a new habit, and hard to break an old habit, but it’s possible.
If I study math every night my attention span for handling math will expand. Carr’s fear is we’re changing our neural pathways to adapt to the internet, and that conditions tiny attention spans. Are we losing our ability to stay on longer tasks? We will develop the ability to process thousands of small tasks a day, but will we lose the ability to work at anything that requires hours of focus? My guess is we won’t give up the internet, so what we need to do is counter its conditioning by taking on one or more activities that require longer attention spans. For example, for every 25 tiny stories you skim on the net, read one 5,000 word essay in The Atlantic.
Extremely successful people are those people who have the ability to stay on task for hours. There are limits. There are times in war and natural catastrophes where people must be on for ten, or twenty, or even thirty hours or more, but it’s extremely rare. Some artists, writers, programmers, inventors, athletes, etc. can push the zone for hours on end, but they are uncommon people. Einstein could go into his trance and see how relativity worked, but there are few Einsteins.
Not everyone buys into the attention span gap. Some people believe everyone is just different, and have different interests requiring varying degrees of attention. Young people might not be able to read a popular physics book, but I can’t play a video game for 30 seconds without giving up. There is a great deal of appeal to this theory if we’re into acceptance, but it causes problems for those people who believe in uplifting themselves by their bootstraps.
Believing in strengthening your attention span is about equal to believing in body building. It’s possible to bulk up your focus.
For a thought experiment fun, I’m going to invent a scale for measuring attention span. I’m not being scientific, just hypothesizing. I’m going to start the scale with less than ten seconds, and end it with greater than eight hours. The average attention span now is 8 seconds, and was 12 back in the year 2000.
I can get to Level 15-16 occasionally, but not often. Maybe three times a week. Anyone can get to Level 15 is they count watching a movie. I’m not sure I do. I’ve listed both passive and active activities, but in terms of rating your attention span, I would guess only active pursuits count. However, I would give people more credit for watching a 2 hour documentary over a 2 hour movie.
I can write two hours of blogs every day until the apocalypse, but I can’t make myself even write 20 minutes of fiction daily. I’d give anything if I could novel write 60 minutes a day. The best I can do is hit Level 17 in a half-ass manner by doing something I’ve already been doing for years. I don’t think I can reach Level 10 at anything new, at least right now. My new goal is to study math, and push myself to concentrate harder each day until I can reach Level 12.
Can you do these tasks without getting distracted? Or does hearing “Squirrel!” get you every time? At what level can you do something new without giving up?
| Level |
Time |
Task |
| 1 |
< 10 seconds |
Dial phone number from memory, multiple two small numbers in head, think of something to say, jump between web pages, watch a Vine video |
| 2 |
15-20 seconds |
Read a tweet or text |
| 3 |
20-30 seconds |
Very short conversations, look up fact online, fast glance at news article |
| 4 |
30-60 seconds |
Watch a commercial, common time spent glancing at a web page |
| 5 |
1-2 minutes |
Make a P&J sandwich, brush teeth, read short news story |
| 6 |
2-3 minutes |
Listen/play/sing a song, brush teeth |
| 7 |
4-5 minutes |
Study short poem or song lyrics, write a short email, order something online, listen to someone tell about their day, read longer news story |
| 8 |
5-10 minutes |
Longer YouTube videos, Khan academy lesson |
| 9 |
10-15 minutes |
Kid reading session, kid music practice, write a medium size email, solve a decent math problem, solve a medium Sudoku |
| 10 |
15-20 minutes |
Prepare an easy meal, read a short article or short story, intercourse, commute, average time U.S. citizen reads per day |
| 11 |
20-30 minutes |
Sitcom, useful study session, fill a cavity, walk/bathe a dog |
| 12 |
30-45 minutes |
Older adult reading session, cook medium size dinner |
| 13 |
45-60 minutes |
College class, tutor a student or be tutored, older children music practice, read a longer article, do a decent crossword puzzle, church service, listen to album |
| 14 |
60-90 minutes |
K-12 activity, good disciplined novel writing, good amateur chess match, watch a TV documentary on PBS |
| 15 |
90-120 minutes |
Watch movie, professional chess match, cook big meal, serious music practice, average video game session, watch a good documentary movie, productive bird watching |
| 16 |
2-3 hours |
Perform at rock concert, bookworm reading session, productive time for serious hobby, perform complicated surgery, time required to practice 10,000 hours in 10 years (2.73hr/day) |
| 17 |
3-5 hours |
Solid morning’s work at job without distraction, Indy 500 race, write this blog, play 18 holes of golf |
| 18 |
5-6 hours |
Average TV watching per day, prepare a Thanksgiving meal, the amount of work most people do in their 8 hours, write a stats program |
| 19 |
6-7 hours |
Very productive day of writing/composing/painting/calculating, average night sleep |
| 20 |
> 8 hours |
Performing brain surgery, intense in-the-zone painting, writing, programming, athletic feats, scientific/mathematical concentration, intensive combat |
Most people can do something for several hours straight, even if it’s just watching television or sleeping. But that’s often just doing something passive. Doing something active, especially something that requires concentration, and even intensive concentration is what separates productive people from people who just get by in life.
Most of what we do every day is Level 7 or less when it comes to an active activity. If you can totally focus 100% of your attention on any object or task at Level 7, you’d have Zen level mastery over your mind, and that’s just five minutes of mental focusing. You’d be an advance Zen student if you could just watch your wandering thoughts for five minutes.
Because Nicholas Carr claims links are a distraction, I’ve left them for last.
Links
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 