By admin
My attention span is getting shorter every day. I don’t have any hard data to back that up, but I’m 100 percent sure it’s true. I can’t focus on anything these days.
Trying to begin this article, for example, has been an absolute odyssey. I started off strong by opening a doc and writing a headline. Naturally, this burst of productivity calls for a break. Let’s delete some emails. That doesn’t even count as a break, though, so I’ll just hop over to Instagram for a second. Oh, look, my sister posted a story. That reminds me that my sister texted me, and I haven’t responded to her yet. But wait, a Slack message from a coworker. And the distractions just keep coming.
Some variation on this pattern happens maybe 30 times a day. And even when I supposedly am focused on the task at hand (not peeking at the news or my Slack convos), my thoughts themselves are distracting, and I often find myself daydreaming about or ruminating on whatever is making me anxious that day. The constant internal monologue is exhausting to listen to, and I can only control it for so long before my concentration splinters and I’m sucked into the distraction.
For my own sanity, I wanted to get to the bottom of this. Why is my attention span so short, and is there anything I can do about it? The answer to the second question: yes. The answer to the first? Well . . . there are a lot of reasons. This introduction has gone on long enough for an article about short attention spans (special kudos to anyone who’s still with me!) so let’s get into it already.
Why Is My Attention Span So Short?
“There are a variety of underlying reasons that may be contributing to attention span issues,” Marcy Caldwell, PsyD, a psychologist at Rittenhouse Psychological Services, tells POPSUGAR. Here are some factors behind why your attention span might feel so short:
- Lack of sleep: Amount of sleep and quality of sleep has a major impact on your attention span. Research shows that sleep deprivation negatively impacts your attentiveness, memory, and vigilance, or your ability to continue working on a task that’s long or monotonous, and Caldwell says lack of high-quality sleep is one of the most common reasons people struggle with focus and concentration.
- Too many competing demands: It’s hard to maintain your focus when you’re juggling multiple roles or tasks once (think: balancing your WFH job with family caretaking or group chat notifications with work emails). When you’re pulled in different directions, “it’s really hard for our brains to zone in and . . . get that deeper level attention,” Caldwell explains.
- Strong emotions: Emotions can be extremely distracting, whether they’re positive (you’re excited to see a friend tonight or reliving an amazing date) or negative (you feel anxious or sad, or you’re in an argument with someone). These strong emotions can easily pull your attention away from the task at hand, says Michelle Hunt, LMHC, NCC, a psychotherapist at Empower Your Mind Therapy.
- Screen dependency: A quick scroll of Twitter, a Google search to satisfy a stray question, or a short YouTube video all hit your brain’s “reward centers,” Caldwell says. These seemingly trivial distractions are actually giving your brain a small boost of dopamine, which is why procrastinating with a screen can feel so good — your brain is literally pumping out a bit of a pleasure chemical. This dependency makes it even harder to stay away from those distractions and work through the discomfort that comes with concentrating on a less-than-fun task, Caldwell explains.
- Biological or mental health conditions: Underlying issues like depression, anxiety, ADHD, head trauma, PTSD, or learning disabilities might contribute to attention span problems, Caldwell says.
Your efficiency obviously takes a hit when you struggle with your attention span, but that’s not the only issue. When you hop from one thing to another, you’re not processing your task as deeply, Caldwell explains, “so we’re not learning it as well, and we don’t remember things as well.” This can make it more difficult to study effectively, for example, or prepare for a work presentation.
Plus, getting distracted is easy, but pulling yourself back to your task afterward takes a lot of energy. Even successfully fighting off the impulse to switch tasks “takes a huge amount of willpower,” Caldwell says. Struggling with focus drains your time and energy, so you’ll feel wiped out at the end of a task that takes longer than it should have, giving you less time to recover before the next thing.
