You sit down to answer one email, but before you can finish, a text arrives, a coworker swings by and you then somehow end up watching a video you never even intended to open. By the time you return to the email, you’ve forgotten what you wanted to say.
If this sounds familiar and focusing feels harder than it used to, you aren’t alone − but that doesn’t necessarily mean your attention span
is shrinking.“The human brain has always been vulnerable to distraction,” says Dr. Adam Gazzaley, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. “But what has changed dramatically is the environment in which our brains operate,” he says, including near-constant access to information, countless ways to communicate, an endless stream
of entertainment options and pinging invitations to switch tasks.
The good news is that focus is not an all-or-nothing trait. And understanding how attention spans work can help you protect yours, strengthen it and even recognize when difficulty concentrating might signal an underlying issue that deserves attention. Here’s what to know.
What does focus mean? Why do we lose focus?
Focus is sustained, selective attention that, at its simplest, “is the ability to direct our limited mental resources toward information relevant to a current objective while filtering out what isn’t,” Gazzaley says.
Amishi Jha, a psychology professor and director of contemplative neuroscience at the University of Miami, compares focused attention to a flashlight.
“Whatever the beam illuminates receives enhanced neural processing and can appear clearer or more vivid,” she says, “while everything outside of the beam becomes dimmed.”
Selecting what to illuminate is necessary because “our brains have limited processing capacity,” meaning our working memory can hold only a small amount of information at once, says Daniel Smilek, a psychology professor who studies attention and mind-wandering at the University of Waterloo. Our brains must manage that information amid competing tasks, thoughts and distractions.
That’s one reason focus can fluctuate so much, but there are other factors to consider as well. For instance, Smilek says, sleep loss and fatigue can make it harder to sustain attention and hold information in working memory. And stress can disrupt focus by filling the mind with worries and making it harder to direct mental resources toward the task at hand. Low motivation may also make distractions more appealing, Jha adds, while boredom often prompts the brain to seek stimulation elsewhere.
Age plays a role as well, because “cognitive control develops through childhood and adolescence and changes again with aging,” says Gazzaley. In other words, children and teenagers are still developing the ability to resist distractions and regulate their attention, while older adults may process information more slowly or find it harder to filter out irrelevant information or recover after an interruption.
Dietary habits can also affect how alert and focused you feel, because going long stretches without eating may leave some people feeling sluggish or distracted. Inadequate hydration can also make concentrating more difficult.
How to improve concentration
Because so many factors can affect focus, addressing the underlying issue is a good place to begin, as “each factor can potentially be addressed to improve concentration,” says Smilek. For example, Gazzaley says, “if you’re chronically sleep deprived, no productivity technique is likely to fully compensate for that.”
Beyond addressing and correcting the root cause, certain strategies may also be helpful. Multitasking less, taking restorative breaks and improving your diet can all be useful. Although research into the relationship between digestive and cognitive health is still evolving, “studies have shown a strong connection between the gut and the brain, known as the ‘gut–brain axis,’” says Smilek. Because of this, maintaining a healthy gutwith low levels of inflammation can lead to less inflammation in the brain and better cognitive health.
Regular exercise has also “been found to be one of the most consistently supported ways of benefiting brain health, and research continues to show additional benefits for executive functions involved in cognitive control,” says Gazzaley.
Another strategy is to “give your attention a very clear goal,” Jha advises. Telling yourself to “work on your report” is vague, she explains, while setting an objective to “draft the opening paragraph” tells your attention exactly where to go.
Motivation matters, too, as Smilek recommends connecting the task at hand to something you value. For instance, you might remind yourself that completing an assignment will free you to spend time with a loved one. You can also plan a small reward or some downtime after it's complete.
It’s also important to reduce the number of distractions competing for your attention. This means silencing nonessential notifications, closing unrelated tabs and even placing your phone facedown or out of easy reach. “Managing your environment these ways can be easier and more effective than continually forcing the brain to resist temptation,” Gazzaley says.
Mindfulness may also be helpful. Jha suggests focusing on your breathing, noticing when your mind wanders and gently redirecting it back to where you want it to go. “Each such cycle is a mental push-up,” she says.
When should you see a doctor?
But sometimes, difficulty focusing remains no matter how many distractions you eliminate or techniques you try. Physical conditions such as anemia, thyroid disorders, hormonal changes or the lingering effects of an illness or head injury may all contribute. Jha adds that mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and ADHD can also impair concentration. Sleep disorders, prolonged problems at home or work, substance use and chronic pain can all play roles as well. “People should also be aware that difficulties with concentration can be a side effect of some medications,” adds Smilek.
To determine whether something more may be going on, Jha suggests watching for a noticeable departure from any of your normal focus abilities. Gazzaley agrees, noting that “I would become more concerned when difficulty concentrating is persistent, represents a noticeable change from someone’s usual abilities, occurs across different settings or begins to substantially interfere with work, school, relationships, safety or everyday functioning,” he says.
In such cases, a visit with a primary care professional can be a good place to start as they can review your sleep patterns, mood, medical history, medications and when the change began. They can then decide whether testing or an appointment with a specialist may be appropriate.
But bear in mind that occasional lapses are normal − it's the surrounding context that matters.
“The question isn’t simply, ‘Do I sometimes lose focus?’ Because we all do,” Gazzaley says. “It’s whether the problem is persistent or worsening and is interfering with your ability to function in your life.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Struggling to focus? Here’s how to get your attention back
