In 2004, Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, watched knowledge workers go about a typical day at the office. Using a stopwatch, she noted every time they switched tasks on their computer, moving from a spreadsheet to an email to a web page to a different web page and back to the spreadsheet. She found that people averaged just two and a half minutes on a given task before switching.
Fortunately, there are ways to wrest back control of your attention. They don’t require swearing off technology altogether, but you do need some self-restraint and a few well-timed alarms.Notifications are one major source of distraction – those pings and dings pull you out of your work and prompt you to check your texts, email or Slack. Because our brains are evolutionarily designed to pay attention to novelty, these alerts are almost impossible to ignore.
“We get into this pattern of having short attention spans,” she said. “And if we’re not being interrupted by something external to us, then we switch gears and begin to interrupt ourselves.” The goal is to gradually increase the time between your tech breaks, building up to 20-, 30- and even 45-minute stretches. Dr Rosen said you’ll know you’re ready to focus for longer periods when the timer goes off and you want to stay on task instead of reaching for your device.Tech breaks aren’t only for work settings; you can use them any time you want to be present in the moment.