But then it was time to get out of bed and cook breakfast, and the thing that I focused on, in addition to the omelette in the pan, was the iPad next to the oven. Then it was time to do some work, so I went to a different screen which was attached to another screen itself. All the while, this little devil on my wrist was tapping and beeping and blooping, distracting me as I tried to get important stuff done.
But there was one particular offender out of all of these devices that I wasted more time on than anything else: my phone. I could spend hours on this thing every single day. So, I decided to essentially, for all intents and purposes, get rid of it for a month. As an experiment, I thought, “I’m going to live on this thing for just 30 minutes every single day at a maximum.” This was the amount of time I had for maps, to call my mother, for everything I could possibly want to do: to listen to music, to listen to podcasts. I observed what happened during this time.
It took about a week to adjust downward into a new, lower level of stimulation, but once I did, I noticed three curious things began to happen. First, my attention span grew. I could focus on things, not effortlessly, but with much more ease than before. In addition to this, as I went about the world and especially when my mind wandered a bit, I had more ideas and more thoughts about the future. Getting rid of one simple device led to these three effects.
Noticing this led me on a long journey to understand what it takes to focus in a world of distraction. I pored over hundreds of research papers. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched those crime shows where somebody’s solving a murder and they have a big Bristol board with string attached to papers and memos and newspaper clippings. That was the state of my office. I flew out to meet experts around the world who study focus; I conducted more experiments on myself until I had 25,000 words of research notes about why this is the case.
How does technology influence our attention and our ability to focus? I want to start with our attention spans. The research around this area is fascinating. When we do work in front of a computer, especially when our phone is nearby, we focus on one thing for just 40 seconds before switching to something else. When we have things like Slack open, this lowers to 35 seconds. But the reason for this isn’t what we might think.
We think the problem is that our brains are distracted, but the research shows this is a symptom of a deeper problem: our brains are overstimulated. We crave distraction. Our brains love these tiny nuggets of information from social media and email. There’s even a mechanism called the “novelty bias,” which rewards us with dopamine, the same pleasure chemical we get when we eat a pizza or make love. We get that same stimulation when we check Facebook. So, we crave distraction, and our mind rewards us for finding it.
Our minds today are in a hyperstimulated state where we bounce around between different objects of attention. So, I thought, “If the phone had this impact on my attention span, what if I lowered my stimulation even more?” This feeling we experience when we go from high stimulation to low stimulation has a name: “boredom.” This restlessness when we have a super busy week and then lie on the couch on a Sunday afternoon, thinking, “What am I doing now?”
I put out a call to the readers of my website and asked them, “What is the most boring thing you can think of doing? I’m going to make myself bored for an hour a day, for a month.” And so I did some stuff that I’m still upset about from my readers to this day. Day one, I read the iTunes terms and conditions for an hour. It’s actually shorter and more readable than you might think. Day four, I waited on hold with Air Canada’s baggage claims department. The trick is to call the baggage claim people, not the reservations department, because you’ll wait hours, if you ever get through at all. Day 19, I counted all the zeroes in the first 10,000 digits of pi. Day 24, I watched a clock tick for an hour.
I noticed the exact same effects as during the smartphone experiment. It took about a week for my mind to adjust downward into a new, lower level of stimulation. This maps onto research showing it takes our mind about eight days to fully calm down and rest, like on vacation. My attention span expanded. I could focus even more effortlessly because my mind was less stimulated and didn’t seek distraction. The fun part was the ideas and plans that struck me.
The reason is that my mind had a chance to wander. There’s a great quote from J. R. R. Tolkien, “Not all those who wander are lost,” which applies to our focus and attention. When your best, most brilliant ideas strike, you’re rarely focused on something. Maybe this morning you were taking a shower, and your mind connected ideas to create something new. This is called “scatter focus,” and research shows it lets our mind come up with ideas and plans.
When we let our attention rest, it goes to three main places: the past, the present, and the future. We think about the past 12% of the time, the present 28% of the time, and the future 48% of the time. This is why we plan out our day in the shower. This is called our mind’s prospective bias, which occurs when our mind wanders.
Whatever lets your mind wander, something simple that doesn’t consume your full attention, helps. For me, it’s knitting. Knitting calms me down and helps me come up with ideas. Whatever it is for you – taking a shower, a bath, walking from one room to another, waiting in line, getting a massage – can make you more creative.
After doing this deep dive into focus, we need to make two fundamental shifts in how we think about our attention. First, we don’t need to fit more in. We’re doing too much, and our mind never wanders anymore. This is when our best ideas and plans come to us. We need more space. Second, distraction is not the enemy of focus; it’s a symptom of overstimulation.
I have a two-week challenge for you: make your mind a bit less stimulated and notice what happens to your attention. How many ideas do you get? How does your focus change? How many plans do you make? Use features on your devices to spend less time on them. Have a disconnection ritual every evening. My favorite: I disconnect from the Internet from 8pm to 8am. My fiancée and I have a weekly disconnection ritual, a technology Sabbath every Sunday. Rediscover boredom for a few minutes and let your mind wander.
If there’s one thing I’ve found to be true, it’s that the state of our attention determines the state of our lives. If we’re distracted in each moment, those moments build up to create a life that feels more distracted and overwhelming. But when we make our mind more calm, we get the benefits of added productivity, focus, ideas, and creativity. We also live a better life because of it.