Making peace with my fragmented attention span

Our attention isn't broken, just evolving. In a hyper-connected world of endless pings and pop-ups, it's about shaping how we focus, not giving up.

- Bhavan Jaipragas

For many, the last days of the year are about mapping the next lap around the sun.

We call them New Year's resolutions: eat better, get fitter, quit smoking, smash those Goodreads targets - or just muddle through with a bit more grace, or at least the illusion of it.

I started 2024 with a mission of my own: to fix what I'd dubbed my broken attention - or, put less melodramatically, to pull my scattered focus into something resembling order.

The timing felt perfect. I'd just begun a career break, stepping away from a job where work and life had fused into one amorphous, always-on blob.

My days had been dictated by a ravenous inbox, relentless WhatsApp and Slack pings, and a to-do list that seemed to multiply every time I blinked.

Imagine your brain as a pinball machine, ricocheting from one demand to the next. Not exactly serene, is it?

It's easy to stay trapped in that buzz until you step back and realise it doesn't have to be this way. Freed from the noise, I asked myself: Could I use this break to recalibrate before plunging back into the chaos of full-time work?

My goal was to wrest back some control - or perhaps even harness - what experts call "kinetic attention": that constant and rapid mental gear-shifting as we flit between apps, devices, and every new ping or pop-up.

I'll admit, this endeavour is nowhere near complete. It will likely carry on through 2025 and beyond. And let's be honest, fractured attention spans have been a talking point for well over a decade.

The internet feels omniscient, the smartphone omnipotent, and now generative AI threatens to splinter our focus even further.

We try to concentrate, but our thoughts wander and our eyes glaze over.

The US psychologist Jonathan Haidt's bestseller The Anxious Generation further fanned the flames in 2024, arguing that smartphones have rewired childhood and triggered a mental health crisis.