"People's attention span on any screen in recent years has reached a steady state of about 47 seconds."  -- Gloria Mark

Let's start by admitting the obvious: The resources we have today are awesome, and undoubtedly make our lives better. Nobody wants to get rid of cable TV, the Internet, Social Media, or smart phones. They're a great blessing. 

But!

Somehow we need to figure out how to use them in ways that make our lives better, and not worse. 

Psychologist and researcher Gloria Mark writes about this in her new book "Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity." There is much to be said about how these technologies are reshaping our lives and the world, but Mark focuses on what they're doing to our ability to focus.

Here's some excerpts from a Salon article where Mary Elizabeth Williams interviews Gloria Mark about her book, and its implications for us:

Humans are naturally curious, and we're sitting in front of the world's largest candy store every time we open our phones or computers. There's always something to consume. That's the beauty of the internet. Anyone can contribute. There's always something different, new, and exciting. 

News can happen anywhere in the world, and you can be among the first to hear it — you and 300 million other people. We're used to these experiences of having this newness all the time, and that's what makes it exciting. I asked Gloria Mark about this:

Q: A phrase you use that really helps me is "limited cognitive resources." I can't drive a car that doesn't have any gas in it. The idea that we've only got so much attention is hard for a lot of us to get our heads around. Explain to me what that means, and why we need to understand that and accept our limitations.

A: I use this metaphor of a tank. If you get a really good night's sleep, you start with a full tank, or close to a full tank of resources. But so many things we do throughout the day drain our resources. It's the individual tasks we do. There's also the amount of time since we awoke, that also will drain resources. You have this underlying tiredness that keeps happening throughout the day.

Other things we do can replenish our resources. Taking a really good break can replenish them. If a person really feels exhausted, stressed, burned out, taking a vacation can really help reset that tank of resources. 

This has been studied in laboratory research for maybe 50 years. What they find in laboratory studies is that a person will be given a very hard task, and at the beginning of the hour, they perform very well. But as the hour goes by, their performance gets worse and worse, because they're getting mentally tired. The underlying theory is that their mental resources are draining. Then at the end of that hour, they just can't perform at all. They're just completely drained. We can extend that idea throughout the whole day. A lot of things drain our attention.

Even holding sustained focus can really drain us. There's a limited amount of time that we can sustain focus. It's like you can't lift weights all day without getting exhausted.

Q: We do have to live in this world. We do have to multitask. How do we make a plan for ourselves so that we're able to sleep at night, and function and recognize and work with our own cognitive limitations?

A: The ship has sailed. We are in a technological world and we can't drop out. There are so many digital detox solutions that are proposed. There's books, there's eco-resorts. In fact, I can't believe how much they charge so that you can go there and get away from your technology. It's really a money-making business. ...

We have to do other things. We can't just pull ourselves away with a detox. Even with regular detoxes once a week, you still go back the rest of the week. So what do we do? I'm a great believer that people can develop agency. People have developed agency to stop smoking and to stop substance abuse and other kinds of behaviors. I believe that people can also develop agency to have control over their attention.

I draw on the work from social psychologist Albert Bandura. He talked about self-efficacy. I look at the ways that people can gain agency. The first is this notion of being intentional in what you do. A lot of behaviors that we do on our phones and our computers are automatic. If I see my phone, I have this automatic tendency to just grab it. When I'm on my computer, I might see a tab for news, and it's an automatic tendency to click. Or even if I don't see a tab, I might have a thought to go to social media. That's automatic. 

We have to bring these kinds of automatic actions to our conscious awareness. When we do that, then we can act on them and we can change.

Q: How do we do that? 

A: …

(At this point, I have to summarize, because she goes into detail. If you'd like to get into it, read the article. Here are her main strategies:)

• FIRST: BE AN OBSERVER OF THE FLOW OF YOUR ATTENTION -- pay attention to where your focus is going ... especially if it's being spent on things you don't value.
• SECOND: PRACTICE FORETHOUGHT -- plan your media viewing ahead of time. Set up your day so that you only take a certain amount of time consuming media, and do other things with the rest of your day.
• THIRD: KEEP CONNECTING TO YOUR GOALS -- make sure that the things you're focusing on are things you WANT to be focusing on ... that they are moving you towards what you want from your life, rather than pulling you away from it.
• FOURTH: MAKE SURE YOU'RE TAKING REGULAR BREAKS -- get some time each day where you're quiet, and not getting deluged by media input. Time in nature is especially good for this.
• FIFTH: LET GO OF YOUR FEAR OF MISSING OUT … SLOW DOWN -- part of what will allow you to step away is the willingness to not have all the latest news.

NEXT ACTION:

Today's action step is to practice being an observer of your own attention ... by keeping track of it for a set amount of time. In your free time today, intentionally set aside some time to do things where you are NOT engaging with electronic technology -- maybe reading a book, or praying, or doing some household chores. 

As you do this … pay attention to any thoughts and impulses related to technology use. Notice if you feel an urge to check your phone, browse social media, or click on a news tab. Don't act on these impulses; just observe them. 

This exercise helps bring automatic behaviors into conscious awareness, making it easier to control them. By regularly practicing this, you can start to develop greater agency over your attention and reduce how often you respond to the distractions available through technology. This small step is a foundational practice in building what Gloria Mark calls "self-efficacy" and managing your attention more effectively.