According to psychologists, technology is making it harder for us to focus at work

When psychologist Gloria Mark first started studying focus in 2004, the average attention span on a computer screen was 2.5 minutes. In 2020, it was just 47 seconds. This shift is seriously impacting workers.

One reason why workers’ attention spans are so strained is because there are dozens of distractors in the workplace. Noisy coworkers, foul-smelling food, even the hum of an air conditioner could disturb a sustained workflow. But many psychologists point to technology as the greatest threat to focus. As we spend more time on our phones, our attention spans shrink, making it more difficult to maintain focus.

Beyond technology’s impact on workers’ attention spans, technology also inundates workers with notifications and news alerts. And workplace communication tools have become more akin to chatrooms, adding to the onslaught of incoming messages. Mobile-first workplace communication tools have even blurred the boundaries of work and home with virtual work. All of these factors keep us unfocused and unable to access a “flow state” of “deep work.”

Fast Company interviewed psychologists and productivity coaches to ask: Why is it so hard to focus right now? Here’s why they all blame technology.

Modern tech’s impact on focus

Mark is not just a psychologist. She is also the chancellor’s professor emerita at University of California, Irvine and author of Attention Span. Through this work she has come to date the decline of focus back to the invention of the smartphone. Mark’s research suggests that in just under two decades, access to information has grown so significantly and algorithms have grown so complex that phones are now the chief distractor—all thanks to the rise of smartphones and social media.

Social media, she says, “taps into our social natures, and we want to maintain social capital with other people, so we respond.”

Alejandro Lleras, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, describes the process by which our brains naturally become more prone to distraction over time as “habituation.” And habituation, he says, makes it more difficult for modern workers to focus on longer tasks.

“The way the brain works is that anything it codes for the same period of time eventually diminishes in amplitude and strength,” Lleras says. “Eventually, maintaining a goal will become less active, less strong, and other goals that are latent in your system will pop up.”

To be sure, habituation can have positive effects. Your brain, Lleras explains, will pause its focus to remind you that you need to take medications, or that you need to call a loved one. But in our world of news alerts and social media notifications, those distractions could be digital. Moreover, they could come sooner than the natural habituation process allows, he says.

In this way, tech can distract us from our work. For instance, thanks to modern technology, many employees use their breaks to text loved ones. Of course, this is an understandable instinct. However, those conversations have spill-over effects. Lleras uses the example of texting about the death of a loved one during downtime: “[When] you go back to work, you’re no longer having that conversation, but that triggered this emotional state of distraction in your mind.”

Technology’s tendency to make daily tasks easier, could also be damaging our ability to focus. Cheryl Travers, an organizational psychology researcher at Loughborough University, explains that adversity can be psychologically beneficial to working through distraction.

“People actually like a challenge,” Travers says. “If things are made too easy sometimes that prevents our focus. Adversity can be a major facilitator.”

Travers says that in this way, humans can be like dogs, who will sometimes hide their food just so they can pretend to find it.

Notifications are the ultimate distraction

Travers also likens humans to a different canine: Pavlov’s dogs. Modern technology in general, and social media in particular, can create a pavlovian response in our brains, she suggests.

It need not be a notification on your own device that interrupts workflow, says Travers. A coworker’s phone dinging could be just as distracting, and can trigger the instinct that you need to check your own. Travers describes workers losing focus in anticipation of their own device’s ding as if we are “mentally salivating at the sound.”

But our own phone’s notifications may be the ultimate focus-killers. Larry Rosen, a professor emeritus of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, describes how the brain processes the surge of social media pings.

“The phone beeps with a notification from TikTok, and when that happens, we get a deposit of chemicals in our brain that says ‘You’ve got to go check that,’” Rosen says, and says that cortisol is one of those chemicals. “You start building up these anxiety-laden chemicals until you go, ‘I have to do it.’”

Many workplace psychologists suggest that the ideal scenario is for workers to achieve a state of “deep work,” where individuals can engage in a long sustained effort. But short spurts of work are also as important—and they’re untenable when workers are faced with addictive, consistent phone notifications. Rosen argues during such spurts, distracting technology can even cause us to repeat work we have already done.

“Your brain, which has been working on a task, has lost that information, and you have to go back and rebuild,” Rosen says. “If you’re working on a report for your boss, you have to go back and remember what it was you were thinking and where your thinking had gotten to. That takes time.”

When asked for the cure to diminished attention spans, UC Irvine’s Mark gives a quick answer: “Turn off notifications. Use an ad blocker.”

Email overload, phones at the desk, and the other focus-breakers

To be sure, some notifications are a necessary part of the workplace, like the ping of an email or a Slack message. But Mark stresses that these can be as distracting as social media, and may not be beneficial. Even a thoughtful email can be disruptive, she says.

“There’s an imbalance of costs and benefits between the email sender and receiver,” Mark explains, noting that the receiver is often on the line for additional work or information gathering. “In some cases, Slack is worse because there is an expectation that you’ll respond really fast. Slack’s design encourages users to chat, she says. “It’s very disruptive to work.”

Mark is an advocate for doing away with cell phones in the workplace. Even with notifications turned off, the presence of a phone on your desk can be an immediate distractor, she warns.

“We also know that, if you’re in a conversation with another person, just the mere presence of a cell phone makes that conversation less engrossing,” Mark says. “If you’re in a work-related conversation, or even in a meeting, having that cell phone in front of you is a distracting influence.”

While the psychologists Fast Company interviewed did not suggest that virtual work has decreased focus, they were wary of how working from home infuses tech more heavily into our personal lives.

“The boundaries between work and home life have possibly blurred more since COVID with more working from home, which can lead to greater anxiety about functioning well in both domains,” Travers says. “These are all factors which can then lead to a lack of focus.”

How do we regain our focus?

Fortunately, our attention spans are not a lost cause. All the psychologists agreed that focus could be trained and regulated—by minimizing our interactions with tech. Setting screen-time limits and avoiding late-night doom scrolls aren’t just beneficial for your mental health; they could also help you focus more deeply.

Juliet Landau-Pope, a productivity coach and author, has worked with clients worldwide to build up their attention spans. She explains that, while there are broad factors that diminish sustained focus, each individual has their own distractors. It’s their job, then, to find out what specifically is disrupting workflow.

“The most important thing is to have an honest conversation with yourself,” Landau-Pope says. “Notice how and when you’re being distracted. Chances are, it’s because of a digital device.”

For those feeling phone-distracted, Landau-Pope offers some concrete tips. Workers can put their phone in a drawer, she posits, or stop using a digital watch. She says employers are also to blame for workers’ difficulties focusing. For instance, Landau-Pope has noticed that open-concept offices make it much more difficult for employees to focus. Ensuring that workers have comfortable and quiet places to work can help improve focus.

The University of Illinois’s Lleras recommends taking breaks. As the brain becomes fatigued with a singular task, it becomes more and more prone to distractions. Some short, sporadic breaks could ensure that focus is recaptured effectively.

“The research on habituation shows us that, when you go back to your main task, you reactivate that as a goal, and that is going to be refreshing,” Lleras says. “You want to find something neutral, play Sudoku or do a Wordle, something short and sweet, and then go back to your task.”

Mark is also a fan of breaks for building up your attention span. She notes that back-to-back meetings are the enemy of focus, a lesson many learned the hard way during the COVID-19 pandemic. But she also recognizes that, with micromanaging bosses and overburdened workloads, finding breaks as an employee can be difficult.

“I would love it for managers to allow employees to have one long break a day,” Mark says, “to be negotiated; at least a good 20-minute break where a person can meditate or contemplate or read something inspirational.”

Long Beach’s Rosen recommends a different kind of break. Rather than setting aside screenless downtime, Rosen argues that we should schedule breaks for social media and checking texts. Under this plan, the relentless drill of notifications is relegated only to specific times of day.

“It’s a reversal, you’re basically flipping it on its head,” Rosen says. “Instead of letting technology interrupt you, you’re determining when technology gets to interrupt you.”

That doesn’t mean turning off your computer for long stretches of the day; for most workers, using tech has become part of the job. But consider the case of browser tabs. Rosen explains that, if your work requires email, you can have email as the only tab opened. Then, you can allow yourself to open more during that separated break.

The psychologists all agreed that it comes down to having a plan for how to improve your focus. So many of us let notifications and social media algorithms wash over us, falling prey to the whims of our phone feeds. Sure, the best way to regain focus would be to cut all of that out. But for many of us that may be unreasonable—after all, our phones are our primary points of connection. So set a goal, be it 20 minutes of screenless time or a full workday of paused notifications. Your attention span will thank you.