It happened because I wasn’t paying attention. Or rather, I was paying attention to too many things at once—which is the same as paying attention to nothing. There was the baby on the counter, my seven-year-old “washing” dishes at the sink, the slow-heating oven, the shrinking window of time left for my fifth grader’s history project after dinner, the Slack notification flashing over the recipe on my phone, and the NPR update about which institution Trump had just dismantled—shouldn’t I drop everything and listen? These were supposed to be my nonworking hours, but I was white-knuckling my way through them. Those collard greens sitting in the fridge? They were getting cooked tonight. Or maybe not, because a second later, I was pressing a dish towel to my hand after the knife slipped, slicing off the tip of my finger.
An emergency cuts through the noise, but we’re all teetering on that edge—our minds pulled in so many directions that control feels just out of reach. Research shows we’re moving in one direction: our ability to focus is steadily, undeniably shrinking. In 2003, before smartphones took over, people spent an average of two and a half minutes on a single computer task before switching. Between 2016 and 2020, that dropped to 47 seconds. How low will it go? Five seconds? One? What even counts as a task in the age of endless scrolling? Art mirrors culture—or maybe it’s the other way around. In 1930, the average movie shot lasted 12 seconds; by 2010, it was under four.
As an editor and writer, I like to think I’m focused, trained to pay close attention. Yet, I feel my phone tugging at me when I’m reading a novel, walking in the woods, or flying a kite with my kids. The other day, I watched in horror as my Uber driver scrolled through TikTok at a red light—only to catch myself checking emails in the same fleeting moment later that afternoon.
This isn’t just a problem because of accidents—though mistakes matter even if you’re not holding a knife or driving a car. Doctors and pilots are just as distracted as the rest of us. Studies show multitasking physicians make more prescription errors, and interrupted pilots make more mistakes. Then there’s the “switch cost”—the drop in efficiency when we jump between tasks. And let’s not forget how awful the constant switching feels. Just one example: our blood pressure rises when we’re pulled in multiple directions.
There’s a deeper way to think about this, as Chris Hayes explores in The Sirens’ Call: “The defining experience of the attention age is… a feeling that our very thoughts are being hijacked against our will.” In short, we are what we notice—and as we notice less (or are nudged into distraction by endless alerts), we become diminished. As William James wrote in 1890: “My experience is what I choose to focus on. Only what I notice shapes my mind—without that focus, experience is chaos.”
Chaos—that’s the headline floating over my daily life. And it’s worse for those who carry the bulk of household work, constantly bombarded by the mental equivalent of smartphone notifications.Allison Daminger, author of the upcoming book What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life, refers to these constant mental reminders—We’re out of milk. Isn’t summer camp registration due soon? Did our car registration expire?—as thoughts we can’t simply turn off.
But there’s hope! While we live in an age where attention is fragmented and monetized, people are also starting to push back against unwanted distractions. As Hayes notes, “It’s a basic rule of American capitalism: where there’s consumer demand, businesses will emerge to meet it.”
Spas like Germany’s renowned Lanserhof now offer “brain health” programs that focus not just on disease prevention but also on improving mental resilience and focus in daily life, says Stefan Lorenzl, a neurologist at Lanserhof. Similarly, SHA wellness clinics in Mexico and Spain provide programs to help guests manage everyday distractions. Thailand’s Kamalaya Koh Samui recently introduced a “cognitive house” featuring everything from high-tech EEG scans to sound therapy for better sleep.
During a visit to New York’s Aman spa, I tried a treatment combining marma-point therapy (an Ayurvedic technique similar to acupressure) with traditional massage. My therapist, Lauren, used a surprising mix of techniques—gentle strokes near my big toe, firm pressure along my inner arm, hot stones on my stomach—while noting, “You have a lot of warmth and positive energy radiating from your head.” I left feeling lighter, the tension between my brows noticeably softer.
Next, I visited Lift, a minimalist float therapy center in Brooklyn, where an ultra-calm attendant guided me to a giant egg-shaped pod filled with 250 gallons of body-temperature water and 1,000 pounds of dissolved Epsom salts. “What if I… don’t like it?” I asked nervously. “You’re required to stay,” he joked before reassuring me, “Nothing’s mandatory!” Still, he said most people stay the full hour. As I floated, my mind slowed, thoughts drifting without urgency. When the session ended, I was surprised—I felt as refreshed as after a yoga session, despite barely moving.
### Clear View
While modern life bombards us with distractions, people are fighting back.
You don’t need elaborate treatments to find relief. Apps like Sidekick, Stay Focused, and Freedom help block digital distractions. One standout is Brick, a physical device you tap your phone against to lock or unlock time-wasting apps—a friend swears it keeps her off Instagram at night and gets her out of bed in the morning.
Once you start paying attention, solutions seem everywhere—not just for work or late-night scrolling, but for your morning coffee, commute, and beyond.The afternoon slump. Supplements and elixirs promise a sharper mind—a more “natural” alternative to Adderall or, in the case of And Repeat’s daily focus supplement, one that’s stylishly packaged (their tagline: “Display-worthy and effective”). While researching this, I receive an email inviting me to cover a “weeklong nervous system reset” in Kyoto, hosted by Japanese wellness brand Apothékary—which, not coincidentally, sells a tart, earthy tincture claiming to “enhance cognitive function and support brain longevity.” Walk through any boutique supermarket, and you’ll find shelves lined with adaptogenic mushroom powders and B vitamin supplements, all promising similar benefits.
But as my collection of herbal remedies grows and my browser tabs for mindfulness retreats multiply, another idea starts to appeal to me: the notion that “empty space” is essential. Neuroscience backs this up—studies have long shown that performance declines when people work on something for too long. It also connects to more poetic concepts, like the Japanese idea of ma, loosely translated as a pause that allows for clarity or growth. This can appear in physical gestures (a moment of stillness after bowing in greeting) or simply in more deliberate speech.
One afternoon, on the subway home from an eye doctor appointment, I experience an unintentional ma of my own. With my eyes dilated from drops, I can’t focus on my phone—or much of anything. My headphones forgotten at home, I’m forced to stare into the middle distance for the entire 45-minute ride. At first, it’s annoying, but as the frustration fades, I settle into an unfamiliar calm.
When I speak with Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at UC Irvine and author of Attention Span (2023), she reminds me that seeking calm doesn’t have to be commodified. Given how widespread the problem of burnout is, her solution is refreshingly simple: take walks, schedule breaks, and accept whether you’re a morning or evening person—then structure your day accordingly. “You can’t keep running on empty,” she says. “You need to set aside time—and that doesn’t mean spending an hour on email.”
“Attention is goal-directed,” she adds. “We need to pay attention to what our goals are.” Those goals can be emotional: How do we want to feel by the end of the day—relaxed, fulfilled, at peace? And how do we get there? Mark describes a study she conducted with Microsoft employees, where stating emotional goals alongside work tasks helped sustain their focus and motivation more than if they hadn’t articulated them.
But how do I apply this to my own life, beyond just wanting “less chaos”? Mark suggests free mindfulness courses on platforms like Coursera, including offerings from Yale. Online classes aren’t usually my thing—too many distractions—but I start thinking about where empty space already exists in my life, and where I might create more. There are my visits to the Quaker meeting house near my children’s school, where each gathering ends in a long, sometimes uncomfortable but ultimately grounding silence. Swimming is my favorite exercise, partly because all I can do in the pool is count laps. I think back to times I’ve been in truly remote places: first frustration, then the desperate search for a signal, and finally, the slow relief of disconnecting.Sometimes I’m completely out of reach. Other times, I’m doing something with my hands that doesn’t involve typing or using a phone—like playing my cello. I learned to play as a child but didn’t touch it for years, though I’ve recently started practicing again. While writing this, I had to wear a splint on my injured finger for weeks, but it’s almost healed now. I think it’s time to start playing again.