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1. A deep and broad review of how our attention has been usurped
   A fluorescent yellow book with the words ATTENTION SPAN written boldly across the cover cannot fail to catch the eye of a generation raised on clickbait. Given that the author, Dr. Gloria Mark, is a world-renowned researcher who has spent decades documenting how our devices drive us to distraction, the striking and alluring nature of the book’s cover can be no accident.Every decade or so, I read a nonfiction book that so profoundly changes my viewpoint, is so chock full of useful information that feels “bang-on”, that I am compelled to fill the inside cover with notes to ensure I don’t forget the useful lessons learned. Gloria Mark’s “Attention Span” is the latest among the very select few that have earned this accolade. (Others included Lila by Robert M. Pirsig of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance fame; Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel; Stephen Jay Gould’s Ever Since Darwin; and Carl Sagan’s The Dragons of Eden.)Chock full of painstakingly gathered observations, clever insights and hard evidence, Dr. Mark’s book carefully documents how and why we have slowly lost our ability to pay attention as our devices—with their notifications and addictive click-bait—have slowly intruded into our everyday lives. In response, Dr. Mark and her research groups have placed themselves—carefully and unobtrusively—into the homes, offices, and devices of hundreds of test subjects over the past three decades. Starting in the 1990s by standing all day behind an office worker with a stopwatch and clipboard, and moving progressively to less intrusive and more sophisticated logging techniques, her team (with permission) have documented how our thoughts and workflows are disrupted by interruptions anywhere from dozens to hundreds of times per day, and how productivity and our health and well-being have suffered as a consequence. Some experiments are outlandish (and instructive!), like convincing an office run with military precision to entirely give up email for a week—with surprisingly few negative side-effects and several positive ones.Dr. Mark exposes with surprising and disturbing detail how the algorithms behind ads can track our behaviour—and even our daily mood—via sophisticated methods and to sometimes disturbing depth. For example, in one experiment she created a new social media account and refused to provide any identifying information, nor access to her contacts… and yet the site presented her with a few dozen “suggested” contacts, about half of whom she already knew. The (tentative) explanation was that they cross-referenced her phone’s internal IMEI number with her other social media accounts… a questionable practice and potential security hole that explicitly circumvents even our best attempts to protect our privacy.The book is chock full of deep-dives into psychology, technology, workflow, personal downtime, online advertising, social media, even how different video edits affect our perception of the content. After providing this context, the book ends with a top-down discussion of free will and agency, leading to practical advice on self-regulation—including how different personality types may need to regulate themselves differently.While some other reviews have complained that the book “rambles” and doesn’t get around to practical advice until the last few chapters, I think they’ve missed the point: a list of “tips and tricks” are likely to be forgotten without a good understanding—a mental model—of the surrounding context. In that sense it’s true that this is not simply a self-help book. It is a well-researched treatise intending to provide a deeper understanding of the why, the how—and the mechanisms by which—our attention has been usurped over the past few decades (unintentionally by users of devices, but intentionally by those who make them), written by a world-class expert who’s studied the process under a microscope for the duration. The context is deep and broad, and provides meaning and context to the tips and tricks provided in the last third of the book. I, for one, would find it difficult to remember and apply any such “tips and tricks” without the mental model provided by the background and context.As Dr. Mark observes, brain-imaging fMRI studies have shown that we become addicted to the reward we feel with new information learned after clicking a link. If the fluorescent yellow cover and bold title of this book are viewed as clickbait, you will not be disappointed with the reward earned by opening it and reading the content within.—Favorite quote: “fMRI studies show that curiosity triggers an expectation of a reward… So as we traverse the internet, links stimulate our curiosity; we select links, read more content, and are rewarded. Our mind is further aroused, we click on new links… and we easily fall down the rabbit hole. Curiosity is the drug of the internet.”

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2. Great overview of our shrinking attention spans
   I enjoyed this book. The first few chapters felt like someone had literally crawled inside my head and watched me work for the past few years. Crazy the amount of distractions we all deal with daily. I gave this 4-stars only b/c I felt the book was a little short on practical methods to regain focus – many of the tactics mentioned were things I personally already do. I did find it insightful how Dr. Mark broke down how we’ve gotten to this point – especially the data around film and shot sequence timing – wow – completely learned something new there. If you are a Cal Newport fan you’ll find this book interesting. Even though there is a lot of data the book is written in an easy to read format.

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3. Not the self-help book it’s market as, but has some worthwhile insights
   If you’re reading this book like I was to find that “Groundbreaking way to restore balance, happiness, and productivity”, you’ll probably be disappointed. The “groundbreaking way” only comes in the last 30 or so pages and it’s not really groundbreaking so much as it’s pretty commonsense stuff like “be aware of what you’re doing” and “try to visualize the outcome of what you’re about to click on”. That’s a shame too, because if they had just marketed the book as a study into the mechanics of attention rather than a self-help book promising some actionable method, I’d probably be more favorable to it.That’s not to say the book is bad, however, as it is a pretty good insight into how attention works in the digital age. The author was clearly quite rigorous in how she set up her studies, and the explanations of things like the four states of attention, and the effects that certain types and timings of distractions have on us are legitimately interesting and helpful to know about. While the actual advice section of the book fell short, there were still worthwhile insights, such as a study which found that externalizing your to-do list on some kind of list leave less “mental residue” than trying to remember it, and nuggets like that actually do point to something tangible that you can actually do to relieve mental stress. The multitude of citations and references have also given me a number of articles and books that I’m interested in looking at later, which I’m hoping will offer further insights.Really I can’t fault how the author presents her studies, and if the book had been leading up to a more significant section on practical advice I’d probably understand the need for such a build-up. In an age where any internet rando promises some revolutionary miracle cure sourced by “just trust me bro”, it is important to be meticulous, and given that she references the famous marshmallow experiment multiple times I was thinking maybe saving the advice for the end was some kind of intentional gratification delay, but the book really is just a research book and not a self-help book like it’s marketed. I also found myself frustrated at how dismissive she seems to be of technological solutions to distractions. She mentions that one of the studies used a “website blocking software” that only seemed to have short-term benefits, but there are so many other types of software and plugins that can have a great benefit. Plugins like UBlock Origin that remove distractions in a subtle way where you don’t even notice they’re gone have a significant effect and it sounds like the software they were using for their studies was a lot more overt. Furthermore there are great plugins like UnDistracted which can do things like removing Youtube autoplay or related videos altogether, and also in a pretty unobtrustive way, that aren’t mentioned. The book does pay lip service to the concept of “change your environment to remove temptations” but doesn’t really say pretty easy, commonsense things you can do to alter your digital environment and mostly sticks with “practice more mindfulness” as it’s big amazing idea.While it might sound like I’m pretty down on this book, I’m still glad I read it due to the mechanical explanations and research it presents, and I only really found myself getting frustrated with it near the end when I realized it probably wasn’t going to be what it was marketed as. I don’t think I’d call it a “must-read” but it still had some worthwhile insights.

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4. Most important thing about a book is the author
   Great read and informative.

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5. Ce livre est illisible et inutilisable car il est arrivé en très mauvais étatTrès déçu

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6. Confirms what we know with a good exposition on the fragmentation of our attention spans in today’s modern world. Always good to be reminded.

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7. Pointless tangents, too many repetitions (it becomes insulting quite fast) simply too much noise for the signal. A little focus would have helped a lot. The irony of writing about attention and then not respecting the readers time/attention baffles me. Badly written, even for the pop science genre. Perhaps the second edition can be one fifth of the length to show at least a little respect to the readers attention?There are some worthwhile contributions to the discussion hidden in this book, mostly the role of rote activities for attention. I recommend to start reading at chapter 13 and skip reading the other chapters if more details are wanted.

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8. We receive constant alerts, notifications and sounds telling us about a new email, a calendar invitation, the latest text message or a reminder to check out a social media post. That’s why I was pleased to read Attention Span: Finding Focus for a Fulfilling Life, by Gloria Mark. She suggests, ‘Without top-down control of our attention, we open ourselves up to stimuli that steer our attention for us. Our mind becomes like a pinball propelled from lever to lever by text chimes, social media notifications and targeted ads.’She also explains that strange feeling we get that the distractions are not all that satisfying. It is called the “Zeigarnik effect,” a finding that, when a task is interrupted, whether by some other task or the end of the workday, “it creates a state of tension from that unsatisfied need to finish it, which stays with us and serves to remind us—over and over and over again—to return to the task.”Turning off notifications is only the first part of focusing on what we want to accomplish. We also need to address the self-induced distractions of our work environment, interruptions from others and doom scrolling on social media. Gloria Mark believes if we reduce the distractions, we can pay more attention to better quality things and make time for thinking deeper. Whereas if we push ourselves to the point of exhaustion, we lack the resources to come up with new ideas.I highly recommend this book if you’re ready to focus on what matters to you.

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9. Manage your environment so it is less distracting, work with your natural bio rhythms, find balance with different kinds of attention, ‘mindless’ rote activity can help reset the nervous system, Tik Tok can make you laugh and feel good.My recommendation is to read Steven Kotler’s the Art of the Impossible for a more detailed and forensic look at focus and flow.

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