On the intersection between attention and well-being.
Earlier in 2024, UC Irvine professor Gloria Mark appeared on The Ezra Klein Show to talk about attention and how to nurture it.
As a fan of Gloria’s work, I was pleased to see her on such a big platform, and her ideas further spread.
The interview is a treat, even for those already familiar with her research or who read her book Attention Span.
Here are some highlights from the conversation.
Interruptions can be productive, when you deploy them intentionally. For example when you step away from the desk to incubate a hard problem, or when you reach a valley in your attentional flow (more on that later) and take an exercise break.
We are conditioned to interruptions. Gloria’s field research shows how our brains easily get addicted to interruptions. Even when external interruptions are removed, such as by blocking emails, her test subjects experienced internal interruptions. The study participants’ brains (and, I’m afraid, ours, too) were so used to interruptions that, when none came from the outside, they conjured interruptions from within.
Keep your goals front of mind. At the start of the day, we might have a clear vision on the most important things we can do for our long term success. But as the day progresses and life gets in the way, those goals tend to fall into the background. Don’t let it happen. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, Stephen Covey famously wrote. Tip: Planning your day on paper helps with this, because you can write your goals prominently and keep referring to them.
Practice forethought. Imagine how your actions right now are going to influence your future self. Gloria uses the example of checking the news online, which we all know can easily degenerate into doomscrolling and emotional overload. When that thought arises, imagine yourself at the end of the day. Will you be unwinding on the couch with a glass of wine, or will you be tired and frustrated, still working to meet your deadline and asking yourself “where did time go?!”
Understand your attentional rhythm. It will come at no surprise to hear that we are all different. Some of us, for example, are early birds, while others are night owls. Likewise, each of us has times during the day when focusing comes easy and times when it’s difficult. Track how you feel, how hard it is to focus, and what activities you have been doing for a couple of weeks and you should see a pattern emerge. You’ll discover your attention has its own semi-predictable rhythm throughout the day. Armed with that knowledge, try to design your schedule to take advantage of your attentional peaks and valleys to the extent that’s possible. This, by the way, is one of the best perks of an async first distributed workplace: letting people design their days in order to fit work in the most effective times.
The interview concludes with Gloria remarking how we need to be intentional in the way we interface with technology so that we can preserve our attention.
So I’d like us to think about how we can be more intelligent about how we use tech so that we’re not getting burned out, and we need to think about preserving our well-being.
And ultimately, I believe we’re a lot more fulfilled by the relationships we have off-screen.
And you know, let’s not ignore those.
Well said.
Nurture your attention as part of living an healthy life.
Train your attention so you can direct it to the things and people that matter.