If you feel as if your attention span is going down the drain, you’re not wrong and you’re not alone. In fact, researchers have found that most of us can only concentrate for 2½ minutes straight. With the pervasiveness of screens that deliver non-stop notifications, plus the rise of short-form videos that train us to focus in ever-shrinking bursts, it’s no wonder our attention span is significantly shorter today than it was a couple of decades ago. The good news is that you can train your brain and begin building back your ability to focus. Here are just a few things that will help you get started.
- • Pick up a book. Book are an excellent way to retrain the mind. When you’re immersed in something, you lose track of the world around you, which means you get your attention back.
- • Get enough sleep. When you’re fatigued, you have a harder time focusing, so be sure to get enough shut-eye each night. That way, you’ll wake up with a full tank of attention capacity.
- • Take breaks. When you’re cognitively spent, everything becomes a distraction. The next time you find your attention waning, go for a walk. Not only does it force a break by separating you from the work, but it might spark ideas too.
- • Decide what’s meaningful. The things we pay attention to matter. A barrage of TikTok videos will shape your attention span in a different way than a deep conversation or a good book will. After all, we are the sum total of all the things we pay attention to.
