Shift your mindset from viewing an inability to focus as a personal failing to understanding it as a consequence of powerful external forces acting upon you.
Understand that your ability to focus is crucial for achieving life goals, maintaining deep relationships, fostering self-connection, thinking deeply, and cultivating kindness, compassion, and empathy.
Engage in tasks that are personally meaningful to you, as attention comes more freely and effortlessly when purpose is present, facilitating a flow state.
Prioritize and foster strong connections with other human beings, as this builds resilience against various forms of ‘addiction’ (including compulsive tech use) and improves overall well-being.
Acknowledge and meet fundamental biological needs like adequate sleep, regular movement, and genuine connection, rather than treating yourself like a machine, to prevent ‘frustrated biological objectives’ that impair attention.
Actively fight against the forces stealing collective attention by advocating for policy changes, such as banning harmful social media business models, implementing a ‘right to disconnect,’ and reforming education systems.
Avoid constant multitasking, as the human brain can only consciously focus on one thing at a time, and frequent switching depletes mental bandwidth, leading to more mistakes, reduced memory, and decreased creativity.
Structure your day to include periods of uninterrupted focus, as it takes approximately 23 minutes to regain full concentration after being disrupted by an interruption.
Ensure you get sufficient sleep (more than six hours, ideally nine hours per night) to maintain optimal attention and cognitive function, as sleep deprivation significantly impairs mental performance.
Practice good sleep habits by keeping your phone out of the bedroom, avoiding screens for two hours before sleep, and ensuring your room is slightly cool to facilitate better rest.
Build ‘slow practices’ like meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, or a calm morning routine into your daily life to boost attention and focus by recalibrating your internal ’thermostat’ for speed.
Allocate time for unstructured thought and mind-wandering, as this is a crucial form of attention for making sense of experiences, anticipating the future, and fostering creativity.
Ensure regular physical exercise for both children and adults, as it massively boosts attention and focus, and a lack of movement can lead to deterioration in attention.
Plan ahead to remove temptations and make desired behaviors easier to achieve, such as not buying unhealthy snacks if you aim to avoid eating them.
Restrict your news intake to a single daily session (e.g., reading a physical newspaper once) to avoid the constant drip-feed of information that can cause anxiety and disrupt focus.
Consider using a K-safe, a physical locking device, to enforce daily phone-free periods (e.g., four hours) to improve personal focus and reduce digital distractions.
Install and use software like ‘Freedom’ to block access to distracting websites and apps (e.g., Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) during dedicated work or focus times.
When engaging in focused work, physically leave your phone in a different room or at home to eliminate the temptation of digital distractions.
If possible, delegate social media updates and avoid direct engagement with feedback (both positive and negative) to prevent emotional distraction and maintain focus on meaningful work.
For important tasks or goals, create a written list of reasons why they are meaningful to you, referring back to it when your attention falters to re-center motivation.
If sending work communications outside standard hours, explicitly state that no immediate response or checking is expected, to respect colleagues’ personal time and right to disconnect.
Implement or advocate for delayed email delivery features in workplaces, allowing emails to be sent but not delivered until the next workday, to prevent disruption of colleagues’ personal time.
Promote the adoption of a four-day work week (with the same pay) in workplaces, as it has been shown to increase productivity, reduce stress, and improve employee well-being and attention.
Support educational systems that prioritize play, later school start times, shorter school days, no homework, and minimal testing until later ages, similar to the Finnish model, to foster happier, more literate children with better attention.
Advocate for homework to be assigned and completed off screens, especially in the evenings, to improve children’s sleep quality, attention, and focus, and reduce detentions.
Create and advocate for opportunities for children to engage in free, unstructured play without adult supervision, as it is essential for developing attention, learning, competence, and reducing anxiety.
Offer children age-appropriate, slightly challenging activities that are at the edge of their abilities to help them build competence and self-esteem, which supports attention development.
Guide children to focus on their personal effort, enjoyment, and innate creativity in academic and creative pursuits, rather than solely on external assessments, to empower their attention.
Parents should reflect on their own childhood experiences of free play and consider allowing their children similar freedoms to foster their development and attention.
Recognize that an inability to deeply focus might be a natural vigilance response to stress or perceived danger, rather than a personal failing, prompting a need to address underlying stressors.
Shift societal focus from prioritizing status and money to cultivating connection and intrinsic meaning, thereby building a collective immune system against attention-depleting forces.
Cultivate a mindset of empowerment and agency, recognizing that as free citizens, you have the right and ability to reclaim your attention from powerful external forces.