Science-backed tips on how to avoid distractions | Nature
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Smartphones and other digital technologies are a constant potential source of distraction. According to a 2025 survey by Reviews.org, an online resource that reviews mobile services and Internet providers, on average, US adults check their phones 186 times per day, or roughly once every five minutes (see go.nature.com/4b4zgje). They also spend 5 hours each day using smartphones, which amounts to 76 days of screen time per year, with Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) and Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) spending the most time scrolling on their phones.<br>Over the past two decades, these has been increased interest in whether people’s ability to focus on a single task has deteriorated. People often report that they think their attention span has shortened (see go.nature.com/4dfz8yc). But data that definitively show a drop in attention are sparse.<br>LINK Should I use AI to help draft my science job application?
“Every year that passed, things that are so important to me, like reading books, having proper long conversations, even watching films, were getting harder and harder to do,” says Johann Hari, whose 2022 book Stolen Focus, outlines 12 reasons why people’s attention spans have declined, and offers tips to help people regain their focus. “I felt like I was running up a down escalator that was going faster and faster every year,” adds Hari about his declining ability to pay attention.<br>Staying focused is crucial for short-term memory, problem solving and creativity, whereas frequent distractions lead to more errors and higher levels of stress and frustration. “Attention is at the heart of all human achievement,” says Hari, who lives in London and Los Angeles, California. “Anything you’ve ever achieved in your life that you’re proud of, whether it’s starting a business, getting a PhD, being a good parent or learning to play the guitar, required a huge amount of sustained focus and attention.”<br>Nature’s careers team asked six attention researchers and educators for tips on how to mitigate disruptions and improve concentration.<br>Defining attention<br>“There are two rather separate attention systems,” says Michael Posner, a psychologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene, whose research career of more than 50 years led to the discovery that there are different forms of attention that are associated with different regions of the brain. One form is called executive attention, which describes the ability to focus on one thing. The other is the orienting system, which is guided by disruptions, including changes in lighting, unexpected sounds and other environmental influences.<br>My relationship with my PhD supervisor has become toxic — what do I do?
“Powerful external stimuli are pretty hard to resist,” Posner says. “That’s because orienting is important for being aware of potential predators.” If someone is deeply involved in a task, he says, it’s nevertheless helpful to know if a tiger is sneaking up on them.<br>Today, distractions often come in the form of interruptions such as text messages, e-mails, in-person requests, meetings and sudden noises. But people also actively and frequently interrupt themselves. “The problem is not that we get distracted,” says Gloria Mark, a psychologist and attention researcher at the University of California, Irvine. “The problem is: what do we do about it?”<br>The human brain isn’t able to consciously pay attention to more than one thing at a time, says Mark. Instead, it switches rapidly between tasks, which comes at a cost. “A lot of people think that multitasking is this badge of honour — it’s not,” says Mark. Generally, people who multitask make more errors and take longer to complete a single task because they have to reformulate a mental plan for completing that task every time their attention switches.<br>Cultivating focus<br>Individuals have their own peaks and valleys for when they focus best, says Mark. These personal rhythms vary depending on factors such as a person’s natural tendency to sleep and wake at certain times and how much sleep they get. In general, people have a period of peak focus mid-morning, then a dip around lunchtime and a second peak in the afternoon. “That’s on average,” Marks adds, noting that some people have focus peaks early in the morning, whereas others focus best later in the day or during the evening.<br>“For scientists, it’s really important for them...