Attention Span

As seen on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard and in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and The Times

A Cosmopolitan Best New Non-Fiction Book to Add to Your TBR in 2023
A "Next Big Idea Club" Must-Read

Rediscover your ability to pay attention with this groundbreaking new approach from ‘the definitive expert on distraction and multitasking’ (Cal Newport).

We spend an average of just 47 seconds on any screen before shifting our attention. It takes 25 minutes to bring our attention back to a task after an interruption. And we interrupt ourselves more than we're interrupted by others.

In Attention Span, psychologist Gloria Mark reveals these and more surprising results from her decades of research into how technology affects our attention. She shows how much of what we think we know is wrong, including insights such as:

• Why multitasking hurts rather than helps productivity
• How social media and modern entertainment amplify our short attention spans
• What drains our mental resources and how to refuel them
• The four types of attention that we experience every day and how to recognise them

While the concept of ‘flow’ has previously been considered the ideal state of focus, Dr Mark offers a new framework to help explain how our brains function in the digital world: kinetic attention. This book reveals how we can take control, not only to find more success in our careers, but also to find creativity, joy and wellness in our everyday lives.