Three steps to fix your attention span

Starting the year with a broken brain? We asked experts how you can get your focus back

- Simar Bajaj

(Seba Cestaro/The New York Times)

It's no wonder our attention spans are shrinking. When we're engaged with the world in front of us, pings and dings interrupt. And in the lulls, we use screens to outrun moments of boredom, anxiety and loneliness.

These digital distractions have made it hard to sustain focus — while working, reading a book or spending time with friends and family. Some people find that they struggle to keep their minds trained on a single task even with phone and email notifications turned off.

But attention is a learned habit, said Daniel Smilek, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. And just as short-form content and endless scrolling can condition your brain to chase novelty, you can also build routines to reclaim your focus.

In general, people underestimate how much they use their phones and how often their minds wander, Dr Smilek said. But spotting these little detours can blunt their impact and make them easier to defend against, he added.

Next time you start a task, keep a tally of every time your attention slips, whether your mind is wandering or there’s an external distraction — including what exactly distracted you.

Also try mapping out your attentional rhythm — the natural peaks and valleys of focus — by checking in with yourself every hour and reflecting on how well you have been focusing, suggested Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine.

See if you can keep this audit going for a full day, added Jay Olson, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Toronto. And if that feels manageable, repeat it for a few more days, ideally a full week.

By the end, you'll have a rough count of how often you tend to drift, a short list of usual culprits and a sense of when your focus is strongest.