What this covers
I’m convinced that attention is the most important human faculty. Your life, after all, is just the sum total of the things you’ve paid attention to. And we lament our attention issues all the time: how distracted we are, how drained we feel, how hard it is to stay focused or present. And yet, while there’s no shortage of advice on how to improve our sleep hygiene, or spending, or physical fitness, there’s hardly any good information about how to build and replenish our capacity for paying attention.
So for the start of the new year, I wanted to have a conversation with Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, author of the book “Attention Span (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/attention-span-gloria-mark?variant=40346590117922) ,” and one of the few people who’s deeply studied the way our attention works, how that’s been changing, and what we can do to stop frittering our attention budgets away.
Book recommendations:
“The Challenger Launch Decision (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo22781921.html) ” by Diane Vaughan
“The Undoing Project (https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Undoing-Project/) ” by Michael Lewis
“The God Equation (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/555753/the-god-equation-by-michio-kaku/) ” by Michio Kaku
Mentioned:
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Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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Attention is a foundational human faculty whose depletion through modern technology use is driving widespread cognitive exhaustion and burnout; reframing attention as a well-being issue rather than purely a productivity one, and treating attentional capacity like a physical resource with rhythms and recovery needs, enables people to build resilience and protect what matters most.
- Attention span has collapsed from 2.5 minutes to 47 seconds in 20 years as digital devices enable constant interruption and self-interruption
- Over 40% of surveyed populations report burnout symptoms; tech-driven email, Slack, and smartphone ubiquity create chronic stress that depletes executive function
- Intentional design of rest, breaks aligned to attentional rhythms, and elimination of stressful interruptions can replenish cognitive resources and improve both well-being and actual creative output
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When external interruptions are reduced in one hour, the number of internal self-interruptions increases in the subsequent hour; people appear determined to maintain a rhythm of interruptions regardless of external source.
“when the number of external interruptions went down in 1 hour the number of internal interruptions went up in the subsequent hour it was as though people were just determined to maintain short attention spans so that if the interruptions aren't coming from some external Source people will self- interrupt to keep that rhythm of interruptions going”
Modern office culture prizes the illusion of productivity and looking busy: being at a desk or on work-related tasks looks productive, while taking walks or playing puzzle games looks like goofing off, even though the latter can be more restorative for actual productive capacity.
“one thing this made me think about was the ways in which the illusion of productivity is highly prized in today's office culture in a way that doesn't really make a lot of sense that you know if I'm at the times and I'm tired what I'll probably do is look at the front page of of the times or I'll start looking at social media or I'll be in my text messages or something but but these are all things that if my editor happen to wander behind me not that he is watching me like this but it would kind of look like I'm working or doing things that are akin to work whereas if I turned on you recommend the game two dots which I actually downloaded and did find to be a lovely attentional break if I turned on a puzzle game and began playing that for a while that would look like I'm goofing off at work”
The challenge of parental attention is that the more burnt out or tired a parent is, the more likely they are to use their phone as an escape rather than engage with their children, creating a self-reinforcing cycle where poor attention habits beget more poor habits.
“I would say this in a way connects to something we talked about earlier which is look I have young children and I am very well read in on not wanting to be on my phone all the time and worrying about my attention and worrying about the example I'm setting and I'm also often tired and overworked and probably burnt out and when that is true and the truer that is the more likely I am to be on my phone so this is why to me the idea of attentional well-being and seeing this as a core part of well-being is important because if you're gassed out attentionally then just having been scolded by Gloria Markin asra Klein on a podcast but how you shouldn't look at your phone when your kid is asking the same question for the 17th time at 5:45 in the morning and you had a terrible night of sleep like that's not going to do anything you're still going to look at your phone because you want to escape that moment”
Checking email when tired and stressed is partially explained by random reinforcement conditioning: emails occasionally contain highly positive surprises (keynote invitations), and this unpredictable reward schedule (harder to extinguish than regular rewards) creates compulsive checking behavior.
“this um notion of random reinforcement every so often when you check the email you you might get a really really important wonderful email like an invitation to give a keynote talk and it may not happen very often and it certainly doesn't happen for all our emails but it happens enough that it it has created a kind of condition behavior for us to keep check checking that inbox and this kind of you know random reinforcement conditioning is actually the hardest Behaviour to extinguish in Psychology if you have reinforcement on a regular schedule like every other email is going to be some really uplifting email and then the email those uplifting emails stop you're going to stop checking but when you know that these emails will appear randomly then it's really hard to stop that behavior because you keep thinking yes at some point that invitation is going to come so I'm going to keep checking my inbox”
Children's behavior is a mirror of adult behavior; parents are role models, and if parents are on screens constantly, children learn this is normal behavior; therefore the best way to help children develop healthy attention is for parents to model healthy attention habits.
“our children's behavior is really a mirror of our own behavior and so it's so important that parents be role models for their children a few months ago I was in Riverside Park in New York and it was a beautiful day sunny day people were sitting on the park benches and two people really caught my attention there was a toddler that was tugging on her mother to pay attention to her and the mother was just engulfed in her cell phone”
When people get interrupted and switch attention, they don't immediately return to the original task; instead, they experience a chain of interruptions, working on an average of about 2.25 intervening projects before returning to the original task.
“people experience a a chain of interruptions you can think of these as nested interruptions so you get interrupted then you get interrupted from that and interrupted from that and people are working on different tasks different projects before they return to that original thing so from our statistics we find it's an average of about two and a quarter intervening projects”
The Challenger Launch Decision by Diane Vaughan documents how organizations slowly come to accept non-normal behaviors as normal, which is relevant to understanding how we have normalized constant email checking, phone use during conversations, and other problematic attention behaviors.
“my first recommendation is the Challenger launch decision by Diane vau so you know when we think about our behaviors in this digital age like checking emails 77 times a day or checking phones throughout the night or texting while having a conversation with someone or using your phone when your kids want your attention we've come to accept these behaviors as normal so Diane vaugh is the person who identified the idea that we slowly accept non-normal behaviors as being normal so you know the this book is such a fascinating account and Analysis of the Challenger shuttle disaster in 1986”
Email creates stress, and this is established not just through correlation but through causal evidence: in a 5-day study where email was cut off for some workers, those without email showed measurable stress reduction via heart rate monitors and became more social.
“we know that email causes stress we know know this from studies I did one study some time ago where we cut off email in an organization for some people for a 5-day work week and without email people were less dressed and we measured this empirically with heart rate monitors we found that their stress went down we also found that people became more social they actually walked around and visited people in their office”
Technology has created a situation where people now spend nearly 90% of their work time at desks in front of screens, compared to roughly 30% in the 1960s-1980s, creating a cost to well-being through stress and potential burnout.
“there were some studies done in the 60s 7s 80s where the researchers followed people around around and track the percentage of time they spent at their desks and this was you know roughly about 30% of their day in 2019 I did a study with colleagues and we found that people spent nearly 90% of their time at their desks so on the one hand we might think it's more efficient but there's a CA to it and the cost is our well-being the cost is stress and extended use of tech without breaks can even lead to burnout”
Technology has expanded the scope of work by adding ubiquitous communication channels (email, Slack, texting) on top of existing workload, creating additional work that was not necessary before.
“let's start with talking about how our scope of work has expanded with tech use so before email communication were a lot slower there were phone calls there were written Communications but now people have an additional workload on top of their other workload which is answering slack messages texting email”
If a CEO wanted to improve employee attention, the single most impactful change would be to institute 'quiet time' when electronic communications cannot be sent, resetting expectations and giving people permission to work without interruption.
“if a CEO of a large company were coming to you and saying what one thing could I do that would be better for the attention of the people who who work here what would you tell them well I would say that they should Institute a quiet time when electronic communications can't be sent so this resets people's expectations knowing that email is not going to be sent out gives people permission to be able to work for um you know a period of extended time”
Interruptions are not uniformly negative; some interruptions can be positive and beneficial: when minds are tired they need breaks; interruptions allow replenishment; social interruptions can address isolation; and interruptions can allow tough problems to incubate.
“some interruptions can be very positive if our minds are just tired and we need a break an interruption can be good it can allow us to replenish you know stand up walk around go outside that's a really great form of interruption sometimes we need social interruptions if you've been working by yourself all day sometimes we we just need to interrupt ourselves to be with other people sometimes interruptions can allow a tough problem to incubate so you know if you're struggling to find some solution walk away for a bit let your mind take a break and sometimes when you come back the answer just appears”
When attention is flagging during focused work (you're rereading sentences or struggling to find words), this is a signal to take a break rather than push harder.
“when you start reading and rereading the same sentence and it's just not making sense or you're you're trying to write something it's just hard to come up with the phrasing it's time to step back take a break”
Managers and decision-makers need to be educated about the importance of employee well-being, which is missing from their thinking; they need to understand that sometimes less work can be more productive.
“managers and decision makers need to be educated that it's so important to consider employees well-being and I think that that's missing from what they're thinking that you know it's really important to give people permission to be able to take long breaks when they need them to take walks outside uh to have social interactions with other people to create create a culture where people are not penalized for not answering electronic communications after work hours and before work hours to give people a chance to really detach from work to restore themselves it's just not in the mindset I think of managers and decision makers”
Cognitive resources can be replenished through activities like taking breaks, naps, meditating, exercising, and walking in nature.
“there's other things we do that can replenish our resources such as taking a break taking a nap meditating exercising taking a walk in nature I'm a big proponent of that”
If you treat attention poorly through overwork and poor recovery habits, it's like sustaining a repetitive stress injury that makes it harder to engage with people and activities you care about; therefore attention well-being is connected to living a good life and being present for things that matter.
“if I'm treating my attention poorly it's very hard for me to pay attention to them because I've injured my attention and so to me like this is why that that move you make of making this about wellbeing is important because it is part of living a good life having enough attention to give to the people and the things that deserve it is really important and when we're frittering our attention away on lots of garbage and lots of stuff we don't even really want to be paying attention to then what suffers are the things that we did not want to suffer right the things that we wanted to be present for”
Digital detoxes don't work as a lasting intervention because people return to tech and immediately resume the same habits; instead, the solution is to think about how to be more intelligent about tech use to avoid burnout.
“the ship has sailed we're in a tech world we can't simply cut off from Tech you know you can't do a digital detox uh well you can but then you come right back to the tech use and you're doing exactly the same thing it's like being on a crash diet works for a while and then you come back and start with the same eating habits so I'd like us to think about how we can be more intelligent about how we use T so that we're we're not getting burned out”
A comprehensive 3-month plan to improve attention should include: (1) scheduling sufficient breaks and empty space (yohaku no bi); (2) understanding your personal attentional rhythm and chronotype, then scheduling hard cognitive work during peak times; (3) practicing forethought by imagining how current actions affect future self; (4) keeping goals in mind and reminding yourself of them regularly.
“the first thing I would recommend is sufficient breaks and there is this um expression in Japanese that I found so valuable is called yohaku noi which is the the beauty of empty space”
When switching attention to emotionally charged content (like political news or a confrontational email), a residue of that content remains in the mind like traces on a whiteboard, interfering with the ability to focus on the original task.
“sometimes when we switch our attention we might get really caught up in something like the news you're you're looking at the news and you read about some horrific event you know or these days political news and then you switch back to your project and that event stays with you it's a residue and it's just like with an internal whiteboard it leaves a residue sometimes you can't erase that whiteboard in real life completely right you see traces of what was written on it same thing happens in our minds and that residue can interfere with our current task at hand”
Attention has a rhythm and people have different engagement patterns throughout the day: they can be deeply engaged with challenging work or doing 'rote' activities that don't require cognitive effort; people are happiest doing rote activities but can also be engaged with challenging work.
“people tend to think of attention as being a binary State your FOC or you're unfocused but when I was studying this I realized that people can be engaged with things in different ways you you can be engaged with writing a paper which is can be challenging or you're reading difficult material you can also be engaged with watching a YouTube video or playing a game like Candy Crush what I call roote activities you're not not exerting cognitive effort it turns out people are happiest when they do Road activities”
20 years ago, people's average attention span on a task was 2.5 minutes, and 20 years later it had decreased to 47 seconds on any screen, a finding replicated by other researchers who found 44-50 second windows.
“usually what studies do is they ask people to self-report how much time you SP and and people are just notoriously bad at estimating time so we followed people around with stopwatches in the workplace and 20 years ago we found that the average attention span was 2 and a half minutes and then came along a very sophisticated computer logging software and we found 20 years later that attention spans averaged 47 seconds on any screen and this was replicated by other people as well one study found 44 seconds another one 50 seconds but it all averages about 47 seconds”
The broaden and build theory shows that when people experience positive emotion they produce more and are more creative, which means experiencing positive well-being enables greater production.
“there's a psychological theory it's called the broaden and build theory that showed that when people experience positive emotion they actually produced more they were more creative and so the upshot is that when we experience positive well-being we can produce more”
Being tired and cognitively depleted leads to reduction in intentional capacity, with research showing people who are more tired will spend more time on Facebook and distracting websites the next day and are more easily distracted.
“you do talk about the way in which being tired can lead to a reduction in intentional capacity how people who are more tired if you track their computer usage the next day they'll be on Facebook more they'll be messing around more they'll be more easily distracted”
Executive function in children doesn't mature until around age 10, making younger children more susceptible to distractions, particularly from screens; therefore children's media consumption early in life can lead to attentional problems later.
“executive function that's the CEO of the mind it's not yet mature for kids and it it doesn't really mature till kids are around 10 years old and if it's not mature kids become even more susceptible to distractions uh especially when they're they're younger and there there was a longitudinal study done in New Zealand that found that you know kids who watched TV the the more of that they watched the more attentional problems they experience later in life”
We are ultimately more fulfilled by off-screen relationships than on-screen ones; therefore, preserving attention for real-world connection is important.
“you know ultimately I believe we're we're a lot more fulfilled by the relationships we have off screen and you know let's not ignore those”
Wittgenstein reportedly came up with his greatest ideas while peeling potatoes, which would look to an observer like he wasn't thinking or working, but that was his method of allowing his mind to wander and have creative breakthroughs.
“I read that vidin Stein claimed that he love to peel potatoes because he came up with his greatest ideas while he was peeling potatoes and someone looking at vien Stein would say okay this guy is not working he's not thinking right he's not sitting in front of a pad of paper and writing but that was his way to kind of help his mind wander and think of creative ideas”
Minds can become injured through excessive mental effort and chronic stress, in the same way that bodies can be injured through overtraining, and this injury is called burnout.
“can our minds become injured if we exert mental effort for a long time the same way that when we lift weights for a long time our bodies can get injured and I thought about it and I said yes yes we can our minds can get injured it's called burnout and it's a really extreme form of mental exhaustion it's when we experience chronic stress for a very long period of time”
Parents must prioritize their attention to their children when children seek it, even when tired or overwhelmed—getting off the screen and giving attention is not negotiable parental responsibility.
“don't ever put your computer or phone don't ever put that first before your own child if your child needs your attention get off your screen and give your attention to your child and above all you know make sure that you are setting a good example and you're not on your phone on your screen around the clock because your your children they pick that up”
Attentional capacity is like a tank of cognitive resources that starts full at the beginning of the day and is depleted by activities like watching children, focusing for long periods on computers, and multitasking with rapid attention shifts.
“when we use our attention a lot like when you're trying to focus on your kids we're expending our limited and very precious cognitive resources and the way to think about it is that we we start our day with a tank of cognitive resources you you can think about it as attentional capacity and there's things we do during the day that deplete our attentional capacity like watching kids or focusing for a very long time on the computer or multitasking shifting our attention fast”
People check email on average 77 times a day, and this frequency itself is a source of significant stress.
“people check email on average 77 times a day which is quite a lot”
Even accounting for averaging: the median (midpoint) of attention observations is 40 seconds or less, meaning half of all tasks are completed in 40 seconds or less.
“remember it's an average so sometimes people spend longer a lot of times they spend shorter and if we look at the midpoint of the data the midpoint is 40 seconds so that means half of all of our observations were 40 seconds or less”
A survey of over 10,000 people across six countries including the US found that over 40% of respondents reported symptoms of burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, powerlessness), indicating this is a widespread issue requiring serious attention.
“there was a survey done not too long ago of uh over 10,000 people uh it was done in six countries including the US and over 40% of respondents reported symptoms of burnout the symptoms I mentioned feeling exhausted feeling cynical Feeling Just powerless to do anything 40% that's a really high number”
'Yohaku no bi' is a Japanese concept meaning 'the beauty of empty space,' illustrated in Kyoto rock gardens where the space around the rocks is as beautiful and important as the rocks themselves—serving as a metaphor for intentional scheduling of empty time in your day.
“there is this um expression in Japanese that I found so valuable is called yohaku noi which is the the beauty of empty space and I I was really struck by it I I visited beautiful gardens in Kyoto it's a very famous beautiful rock garden and what struck me was it was not so much the the rocks that were beautiful to look at but it was also the space Around The Rock it set the stage for the rocks and I I think of this Japanese phrase y yakobi as a metaphor for thinking intentionally about scheduling in empty space into your day which could be exercise could be contemplation meditation it's time when you're not doing your hard work but it's going to set the stage and prepare you for doing that hard work”
Modern workplace design—with constant email, Slack, and interruptions—is difficult to explain from an economic perspective because workplaces explicitly state they want creativity and deep work, yet structure themselves in ways proven to prevent it.
“doesn't this suggest that in a way that is a little bit hard to explain from an economic perspective that we have really screwed up modern workplace culture it seems to me that we imagine productivity almost as if we were watching somebody be productive in a movie we've created this pressure to always look like you're working even though we know that is not how at least creative work happens that seems a little difficult to explain given that in theory workplaces want people to do their most creative work and yet it seems very very prevalent”
Klein challenges Mark's statement by noting that parental stress and burnout are the actual barriers: knowing you shouldn't be on your phone while your child asks for attention for the 17th time at 5:45 AM after a poor sleep doesn't change the behavior—the behavior only changes when overall well-being is better (sleep, work boundaries, recovery).
“if you're gassed out attentionally then just having been scolded by Gloria Markin asra Klein on a podcast but how you shouldn't look at your phone when your kid is asking the same question for the 17th time at 5:45 in the morning and you had a terrible night of sleep like that's not going to do anything you're still going to look at your phone because you want to escape that moment”
The attentional dynamics of muscle recovery in weightlifting—including rest days, varying stimuli, and recovery nutrition—are analogous to how cognitive resources work, but our language and teaching around attention lacks the specificity and sophistication that exists for physical training.
“it really struck me how thin our vocabulary and our teaching around attention is if if we do have these cognitive resources that get exhausted that have rhythms that need rest they need to be varied and the kind of stimulus you get we almost have no way of talking about that”
A Microsoft Research study found that simply asking people three questions at the beginning of the day—what's your task goal, what do you want to accomplish, and how do you want to feel—brings task and emotional goals to mind and helps keep them on track, though the effect is temporary and requires daily repetition.
“I did a study at Microsoft research this was led by Alex Williams and we had people answered very simple questions at the beginning of the day what's your task goal for the day what do you want to accomplish what's your emotional goal how do you want to feel today and by thinking of these questions it brought their task and emotional goals to mind and helped keep them on track the effect didn't last very long and that's because goals slip and they're Dynamic and it's so important for us to keep reminding ourselves of our goals to help keep us on track”
Sustained attentional effort (watching children without breaks, intense focus work) creates a specific form of exhaustion distinct from physical tiredness—an 'intentional exhaustion' that requires complete recovery through sleep or deep rest.
“I can't ever look away and the kind of sleep I end up needing to take sometimes in the middle of those days is like no nap I've ever taken as an adult before it is completely drained completely exhausted and it it feels to me like an intentional form of exhaustion”
Attention is the most important human faculty because at the end of your life, your experience of your life is the sum total of the things you paid attention to.
“I am so convinced that attention is the most important human faculty that at the end of your life what was your experience of your life it was the experience of the sum total of the things that you paid attention to”
The internet, and particularly the smartphone (which arrived in 2007), gives people ubiquitous access to information and messages, which Mark believes contributes to increased self-interruptions; the objective number of pre-internet interruptions has not been measured, but Mark believes self-interruptions have increased since the internet.
“you know objectively the number of interruptions pre- internet has not been measured so I I can only speak about my own sense of what I think is going on I do believe that people do experience more self-interruptions since the internet came about why is because you know people have access to more information and more people than they've ever had before the big thing that came along in 2007 was the smartphone and the smartphone allows us to check for information for messages from people really in a ubiquitous way wherever we are and so that's another reason why I I believe we self- interrupt more now”
Maya Angelou's framework of 'big mind' and 'little mind': big mind is used for deep thought and creativity (focused attention), while little mind handles rote tasks and crossword puzzles, allowing attentional resources to refill.
“the great poet and writer Maya Angelo talked about her her big mind and her little mind and her big mind was what she used for her deep thought and her creativity and so that's what I would call focused attention right where you're really being focused and challenged but she also talked about being able to step away and use what she called her little mind she did crossword puzzles or you know she did small tasks which kind of allowed her attentional resources to fill back up in the tank”
'The Undoing Project' by Michael Lewis describes a great collaboration between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky whose different personalities and conflicts led to foundational insights in psychology.
“my uh second recommendation is the undoing project by Michael Lewis I love this book because it relates one of the greatest collaborations in the history of psychology between Daniel Conan and Amos tersi so Conan and tersi had very different personalities and it wasn't just their French ship but it was also their conflicts that just led to some of the greatest insights in the field of psychology”
'The God Equation' by Michio Kaku conveys awe and wonder about physics, including strange phenomena like wormholes and time travel, and is recommended for its ability to inspire intellectual curiosity and passion for understanding.
“my third recommendation is the god equation by mitu Kaku I love this book because it conveys kaku's just sheer awe and wonder of physics and you know you learn about so many strange things wormholes and time travel and if I had read a book like this before I went to college I I might have wanted to study Physics”