Ren Ecosystem. Everything You Need To Know About Your Attention Span

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Attention span refers to how long you can stay focused on a task before becoming distracted.
Digital technology, poor sleep, and stress are among the biggest threats to sustained attention.
If you want to protect your focus, exercise, mindfulness, and reducing digital interruptions may be able to help.

We all make an effort to stay focused. But notification dings, interruptions from family or pets, and nagging to-do lists can make it hard to actually pay attention to the task you're working on, and get it done.

Difficulties with focusing rarely come down to a lack of trying—rather, sleep, anxiety levels, and the environment around you play a large role.Although your attention span can be disrupted easily, you can also support it by working with your biology and making simple changes to your routine.

How Does Your Attention Span Work?

Housed in the prefrontal cortex (the "personality center" of your brain), your ability to maintain an attention span is one of your brain's fundamental tasks.Your brain is constantly receiving a swirl of information from the world around you, but to complete a task, it must focus on one thing and de-prioritize information that isn't relevant.

To do that, your brain employs different types of cognitive processes, or ways of paying attention. When it comes to completing daily tasks, two are most central:

Sustained attention: This keeps you zeroed in on one task over an extended period of time. It's what helps the brain focus when you're writing, watching a movie, or reading a book.
Selective attention: This filters out distractions so you can focus on your task. Selective attention is what's needed for you to stay tuned into a conversation while you're at a noisy restaurant, for example.

Your brain also uses two other attention systems—alternating and dividing attention—when you're focusing on two tasks at once.

Modern Life May Be Challenging Your Attention Span

Despite your brain's best efforts, staying focused has actually become more difficult over the past two decades with the rise of digital technology.

One of the main issues is "attentional overload"—this is a phenomenon where the number of things competing for your focus overwhelms your brain's capacity to pay attention.

The constant notifications, huge amount of information, and endless-scroll algorithms built into technologies and social media platforms can cause this attentional overload. The ongoing stimulation makes it hard for your brain to maintain focus.

Modern digital tools are also designed to repeatedly capture your attention away from other tasks. This may make people more prone to multitasking, or dividing their attention across lots of different tasks at once. While this sounds productive, research shows that people who frequently switch between tasks perform worse on sustained attention tasks.

Other Factors That Affect Your Focus

Digital habits aren't the only thing working against your focus. Several other factors can directly affect your attention span, including:

Poor sleep: Not sleeping well reduces activity in your prefrontal cortex and thalamus, two areas of the brain involved in maintaining attention and alertness.After a night without sleep or a night of bad sleep, you may find it harder to block out distractions when you're trying to focus.

Stress and anxiety: People with anxiety disorders and people with long-term stress may have issues concentrating or maintaining attention and alertness.According to an older 2014 study, this could be because they're more likely to interpret stimuli as potential threats, making it harder to maintain focus.

Aging: Research shows younger people often score better on attention tests than older people, but the evidence is mixed.For example, in one study, older adults finished their attention tests slower than younger adults did, though they completed them more accurately.

Ways To Bolster Your Attention Span

Many people find it hard to sit down and focus on a task in front of them, but there are steps you can take to help protect your attention span. Here are some changes that may make a substantial difference:

Reduce digital interruptions: Notifications are designed to grab your attention, so start by turning off non-essential alerts on your phone and computer. One study found that reducing notifications improved people's work performance.

Move your body: Aerobic exercise and resistance training are effective ways to support your brain health, particularly for older people. Research suggests aerobic exercise may support the health of your prefrontal cortex, while resistance training has been linked to improvements in memory, processing speed, and attention

Practice mindfulness: This meditation strategy trains you to focus your attention on your body in the present moment. Research shows mindfulness sessions may be able to improve attentional control in people of all ages.

Prioritize your sleep: To optimize your focus for the next day, aim for 7–9 hours of high-quality sleep each night.

When To Talk to a Doctor

Occasional lapses in focus are normal. But the following signs may be indicative of something beyond just run-of-the-mill distraction:

Persistent difficulty focusing that affects your work or relationships
Feeling restless, impulsive, or overwhelmed regularly
Feeling like you're unable to concentrate because you're worrying about other things

These could point to conditions such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), an anxiety disorder, or thyroid issues.Talk to your doctor if you have concerns about your attention span, and they can investigate whether any of these conditions (or others) may be responsible.

This article appeared in health (https://www.health.com/the-science-of-attention-spans-11994576).

Everything You Need To Know About Your Attention Span—and How To Protect It

How Does Your Attention Span Work?

Modern Life May Be Challenging Your Attention Span

Other Factors That Affect Your Focus

Ways To Bolster Your Attention Span

When To Talk to a Doctor