Understanding Attention

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Researchers followed adults in their jobs over an extended period.

They monitored what participants did on their devices and how long they stayed on just one task.

I’m a full professor and the chair of the psychology department at my university, which means I frequently give hour-and-a-half-long lectures for classes and conferences, and even more frequently sit through such lectures. But even though I’ve been at this for years, I can’t for the life of me pay attention through an entire session. My mind wanders to other things I have to do that day, what I’m making for dinner that night, or how many emails I’m going to inevitably have to deal with when I get back to my office. I’ve tried practicing mindfulness to be more present and live in the moment, but it’s not easy to sit and concentrate on my breathing for several minutes without my mind wandering off. I can’t even concentrate on a task at work long enough that I’m not glancing at my phone every few minutes. Why can’t I just pay attention?

If this sounds familiar to you, you’re not alone. A group of researchers followed adults in their jobs over an extended period and monitored what they did on their devices and how long they stayed on just one task. The researchers found that adults averaged three minutes on a single task without getting distracted by something else; they barely spent more than two minutes on any software or paper document before switching (Gonzalez and Mark, 2004).

The data look even worse for college students. In another study, researchers examined college students’ computer behavior over 10 hours and found that the average time college students spent on a single task without switching was 19 seconds. In fact, 20 percent of all content students interacted with was only viewed for five seconds or less, and 75 percent—that’s almost all of the content they engaged with for 10 hours—was viewed for less than a minute (Yeykelis, 2014).

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