Pay attention, please!

By Alonzo Byrd.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard this phrase a thousand times.

Whether it was from a parent, a teacher, a spouse or a significant other, someone has always tried to get us to focus on the matter at hand. But for some reason, we’ve always had an issue with paying attention, and researchers say that the problem is worse than ever.

The explosion of the information age, powered by the internet and a gazillion digital devices, is believed to be the number one culprit in our waned attention. One study, cited by author Tony Schwartz in “The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working,” showed that our attention span is, at best, 11 minutes. So read quickly, or you’ll lose interest.

We’ve lost control of our attention span, Schwartz says, out of a need to be continually connected. We can’t focus on one thing long enough for fear that something else (maybe a tweet or a status update) could get past us. Our memory is so fragile that sometimes we can’t even remember what we’ve done after a full day’s work. I’ve been there; have you?

To analyze our “poverty of attention,” Schwartz asks the following questions:
“What’s the longest you’ve gone without checking e-mail at all during the past month? How long do you stay focused on any one thing you’re doing? When was the last time you took an hour out of your day just to think creatively or long term, without interruptions? How often do you sit back for a few moments, take a deep breath, and quiet your mind? Can you remember an occasion recently when you truly felt on top of things?”

These are serious questions and they require careful examination. Are you surprised that the first question deals with e-mail? I doubt it. Schwartz cites statistics that show more than two billion e-mails are sent every day, and we spend about 1 hour and 47 minutes on them; many e-mails, he says, create a sense of artificial urgency. Then, there were an estimated 75 million bloggers in 2009 (including yours truly) and some 50 million Web sites.

All this information, says Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon, “consumes the attention of its recipients” and “creates a poverty of attention.” He said that in 1971. Back in 1597, Sir Frances Bacon told us that knowledge is power, but in today’s world, what good is knowledge if it’s too much and we won’t take the time to make sense of it?

I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface on what Schwartz tells us about our all-too-common attention deficit, and I’ve used a good chunk of those 11 minutes. To do Tony justice, I’d recommend that you read his book, maybe on your e-reader or smart (ass) phone, and pay close attention to chapters 14 and 15.

Those chapters will show that there’s hope for us by learning “attentional control” early in life. Yes, there are things we can “practice” to help us stay focused, like concentration meditation and mindfulness meditation – sometimes called “witnessing.”

And once we’ve learned how to control our attention, we can move on to the next dilemma – what to do with it. We’ll talk about that next time.

Alonzo Byrd is Assistant Vice President, Public Affairs at Enterprise Holdings Inc.
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