Why Our Attention Spans Are Shrinking
Speaking of Psychology with Gloria Mark, PhD
February 2023
Why It Matters 💡
Attention is the invisible foundation of creativity, learning, leadership, and well-being. This episode explains why so many of us feel mentally scattered — and what it’s quietly doing to our performance, stress levels, and capacity for deep thinking.
What It Explores 🤔
Gloria Mark, professor at Columbia University and one of the world’s leading researchers on attention, unpacks how modern digital environments continuously fragment our focus. Drawing on decades of empirical research, she shows how constant task-switching — notifications, messages, emails, tabs — creates a cycle of distraction that degrades productivity, increases stress, and erodes creative capacity.
Rather than framing the issue as a lack of discipline or willpower, Mark explains how our environments are actively designed to pull attention apart — and why this makes sustained focus increasingly difficult for everyone.
Key Themes 🧭
Attention as a finite cognitive resource
Task-switching vs. deep focus
The stress–attention feedback loop
Multitasking myths
Creativity and sustained concentration
Digital boundaries and intentional work rhythms
What the Research Shows 🔬
Mark’s research demonstrates that frequent interruptions significantly increase stress and cognitive fatigue while reducing overall task quality. Even brief distractions can derail focus for far longer than we realize. Over time, this fragmentation weakens our ability to engage in deep, meaningful work and contributes to chronic mental overload.
Practical Strategies Shared 🛠️
Creating clear device and notification boundaries
Structuring time for uninterrupted deep work
Using mindfulness to rebuild attentional control
Designing workdays that reduce unnecessary context switching
These are not productivity hacks — they are protective practices for cognitive health.
Why It’s Relevant for Leaders 🚦
Leaders operate in environments saturated with information and demands. Without deliberate attention management, decision quality, creativity, and presence suffer. This episode reframes focus as a leadership capability — one that must be actively cultivated rather than assumed.
The Takeaway 🥡
Understanding how attention works is no longer optional. In a hyperconnected world, the ability to protect and direct focus is a modern form of agency — and a prerequisite for meaningful work, creative thinking, and sustainable performance.
This conversation doesn’t ask you to abandon technology. It invites you to relate to it more consciously — so attention becomes a tool again, not a casualty.