
The attention economy - jonbaer
https://aeon.co/essays/does-each-click-of-attention-cost-a-bit-of-ourselves
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I got into work mode the past couple years of my life and spent most time
either working or speaking with people, then browsing my phone in the
downtimes / before bed / first thing in the morning.

I hadn't read a book in a couple of years and it was scary the first time I
tried again.

Literally could not read more than 1 - 1.5 pages without my mind wandering or
feeling the pang to check the feed on my phone. Kind of horrifying to be
honest.

Took me a couple weeks to get back in the groove and actually have some decent
comprehension / retention. Personally, reading again was a great way to
rebuild my attention span and just rewiring my brain in general. I had no idea
how bad I had become.

~~~
throwaway13337
Even movies are too slow now for me and some others I'm around. Rarely am I
engaged the whole time. It doesn't matter the genre.

They take too long - just like books - to get a point across.

It's definitely a symptom of the proliferation of smartphones.

I'm not sure it's an entirely bad thing - just a shift in the way we consume
media. Short burst rather than long-form.

Long stretches of passive consumption could be argued as harmful just as not
being able to concentrate on one long-form piece.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Not just smartphones, but the internet in general in my experience.

I'm not much of a smartphone user, I have the latest phone but I'm not a
power-user at all. But I have the same issues talked about.

For me it's related to how I consume information, it's very non-linear.
Wikipedia is probably the best example, you read a page, then come across
affiliated topics and click those, you go down the information tree on that
topic, then come back up to finish the original one. Such that reading about
the history of say a particular city, you'll end up reading about other
cities, about pagan religions, about warlords and their particular tactics,
about irrigation systems, political theory etc etc. It's extremely non-linear.

And when I research a topic, I find I consume information similarly. When I
think about say the environment, I tend to have many tiny questions popping
up, and get them answered. This is akin to having a private teacher who has
answers to all of a kids' questions, versus a school teacher who has got 60
minutes to cover standardised material in a linear fashion.

Books are extremely linear versus say wikipedia. You flip pages one by one,
there's no skipping or switching subjects built in to the design, like say
wikipedia or the internet more generally as a source of information. And my
brain just can't handle having questions pop up, and wondering about things,
and just having to ignore my curiosity to get the book finished. It takes away
from the enjoyment for me. Even when I read fiction, and there's a character
walking in Paris and looking at the 'famed xyz', with a brief description, I
want to look at it! On the internet I'd immediately google it, in a book I
just have to accept that I've got no clue what it looks and shut down my
curiosity. At least if it exists in the real world, I have no issue with
letting my imagination run wild in fiction.

~~~
losteric
I think and learn the same way, but this is very different behavior from what
the article describes.

What you're describing is just a way of learning... Diving deep into the
knowledge graph to understand related topics. You non-linearly learn many
topics, but you're never really distracted from learning process.

That's a bit different than checking your cell phone for a second before
dinner, seeing a twitter notification, responding to your friend, catching up
on the past 40 minutes of posts, re-posting viral content, noticing another
friend's weekend photos, following an interesting hash tag to other people's
posts, seeing a reminder pop up for a game, playing the game, seeing an add
for a new movie, watching the trailer, posting it on facebook, noticing a
funny meme on your frontpage, following the meme to youtube, watching people
play games, and then realizing dinner has been cold for a while.

The former is scattered learning. The latter is just spinning wheels,
literally wasting time. It's dangerous and detrimental to society.

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cousin_it
I feel that media (from newspapers onwards) are doing a great harm by
consuming more and more of the attention that people could have spent on each
other. A big part of modern loneliness can be blamed on this. When you
empathize with Harry Potter more strongly than with those near you, they feel
the loss, even though they can't articulate it. Many escapist fantasies are
yearning for a world where people pay more attention to each other, and
everyone matters more.

Unfortunately it's not an individual problem ("stop complaining and make
yourself worthy of attention"), but a collective one, similar to those game
theory examples where selfish decision-making leads to the worst outcome for
all. Creating more startups and more media is only going to make it worse.

I've toyed with some ideas of improving things on a small scale, like opening
a bar where people can't use their phones. I wish I knew a more general
solution, though.

~~~
studentrob
> I feel that media (from newspapers onwards) are doing a great harm by
> consuming more and more of the attention that people could have spent on
> each other

Is that media's fault?

> Unfortunately it's not an individual problem ("stop complaining and make
> yourself worthy of attention"), but a collective one, similar to those game
> theory examples where selfish decision-making leads to the worst outcome for
> all. Creating more startups and more media is only going to make it worse

Are you certain that everyone feels a burning desire to be known at such
scales?

> I've toyed with some ideas of improving things on a small scale, like
> opening a bar where people can't use their phones. I wish I knew a more
> general solution, though.

That sounds fun! No need to save the world. Make a small one for yourself and
revel in it. If you gave free drinks in exchange for being able to put people
on TV, like big brother bar, where people have to figure out how to
communicate without phones, I'd watch that haha

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msb
"An overabundance of rabbits leads to a shortage of lettuce."..."a wealth of
information creates a poverty of attention."

Herbert Simon talked about this when we were still sending men to the moon
[1].

This _should_ be the charge of HCI practitioners, but the needs of consumers
have largely been ignored. AI might provide some relief (my phone is getting
better at learning when not to disrupt me...but it has a long way to go), but
mostly I think it is up to us to close, ignore or turn away. What I fear the
most is that by choosing to do so leaves us appearing lazy and/or disengaged
in important professional and personal situations.

[1]
[http://zeus.zeit.de/2007/39/simon.pdf](http://zeus.zeit.de/2007/39/simon.pdf)

~~~
studentrob
> Herbert Simon talked about this when we were still sending men to the moon
> [1].

Cool, thanks for sharing. It's sobering to realize when people have already
discussed things we face today

> mostly I think it is up to us to close, ignore or turn away.

Yeah. I feel like there are some successful people who say that stopping doing
things is as important as doing things. Or, they say giving up control is
useful. For every time that you are able to give up control, you can move
comfortably to a new role within an organization. Giving attention to all the
news can be seen as a form of control we're attempting to exert on the world,
says me, another guilty person

> What I fear the most is that by choosing to do so leaves us appearing lazy
> and/or disengaged in important professional and personal situations.

That's fear of missing out talking. Tell him to shut it :)

~~~
msb
>That's fear of missing out talking.

I think it is more a fear of managing expectations than a fear of missing out.
When instant communication is the norm, choosing not to instantly communicate
being perceived as neglect, for example. While in reality, you simply need to
block the distractions for a few hours to get work done.

~~~
studentrob
> While in reality, you simply need to block the distractions for a few hours
> to get work done.

Oh, I see. I suppose that depends upon your relationship with
coworkers/clients. My expectation is that people around me understand that
anything less than a phone call or in-person request does not demand immediate
attention. If they don't, that's their problem. I've never had someone fire me
for letting an email go a few hours. They might ask about it, and then I would
just reply I was focused on something else. Pretty understandable in my
opinion, and if not, again that isn't my problem.

That said, I think being able to do context switches without losing work is an
acquired skill. There are people who can do it in conversation; when
interrupted, they can come back to the original where it left off. I don't
know of many people who switch between code and people but I believe it's
possible to get good at it.

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colmvp
Does anyone have tips for re-gaining focused attention? Willing to try
anything at this point.

~~~
bmer
0) Pick something you want to focus on. It could be your breath, a picture, an
article you want to read, the sounds in your environment...

1) Set a timer for the period you want to focus on it for. In the beginning,
I'd pick short times, like 2 minutes, or 5 minutes.

2) Try to remain focused on whatever you picked. You will inevitably fail.

3) Do not get angry at yourself! Your mind is like a puppy. It will want to
wander, and you're simply going to notice it has wandered, and then pull your
attention back. Be gentle with yourself, because just like a puppy, your mind
will internalize abuse and snap back at you in the future in unexpected ways.

4) Repeat 3) until the timer rings.

5) Hurray! Repeat this exercise as many times as you want, for the rest of
your life. Experiment with how long you like setting the timer.

\-------------------------

This is "mindfulness"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness)),
in my own words.

~~~
bpchaps
Curious, do you have any research links on this sort of thing?

#3 is something I've been working on for handling "failure" in general. I
think that acknowledging a lack of success as a system whose outputs only
include much more than fail/succeed is how something can lead towards, well,
failure.

~~~
bmer
I got introduced to mindfulness through "dialectical behaviour therapy"[0], in
a hospital setting. The researcher who developed DBT initially was Marsha
Linehan[1], who has many publications you can dig into.

Similarly, mindfulness was introduced into popular medical use for stress
reduction, trauma, depression, pain relief, etc. by Jon Kabat-Zinn[2], who
also has published articles.

I am sure the mindfulness article on Wikipedia also has useful links, and you
could use sci-hub/google scholar/etc. to look up more research articles with
the keyword "mindfulness".

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy#M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy#Mindfulness)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_M._Linehan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_M._Linehan)
[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-
Zinn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn)

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Qwertious
Aw, I was hoping it was an article about
[https://snowdrift.coop/static/img/external/nina/MimiEunice_5...](https://snowdrift.coop/static/img/external/nina/MimiEunice_59-640x199.png)
.

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williamkennedy
This is similar to an argument made in Cal Newport's book Deep Focus. He also
goes on to argue that since we are living in an attention-deficit economy in a
time when it is needed most, learning to dig out these distractions is
becoming more invaluable. Great book if anyone is interested in becoming more
focused and less distracted like this article suggests.

~~~
Phemist
Loved the book, motivated me to cut out a lot of distractions in my daily work
life, as well as take control in adjusting websites more to my needs (Writing
small, custom tamper monkey javascript snippets to edit views of, for example,
Facebook)

Just a small addendum, the book is called "Deep Work", not "Deep Focus"

~~~
williamkennedy
Thank you for correction, it is indeed called "Deep Work".

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studentrob
> What kind of attention do we deserve from those around us, or owe to them in
> return?

The world is more interconnected now by things like trade, textual and verbal
communication than it has been before.

If attention is meant to be paid to this form of information, rather than,
say, the earth or the air, which also connects us, then yeah, I'm sure it
feels like our attention spans are short.

Every day there's more text out there. So if you think books and text are what
should be given attention, which I don't necessarily disagree with, then you
need to work really hard to identify the stuff that is interesting to you.

Another option, when you feel this tension, is to sit back and relax, breath
some air, and try to push out all the words that have flooded your brain

I do this in the morning before I look at my phone or computer. It's
invigorating.

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g42gregory
So true. I now use SelfControl free app to cut off all social media, news,
videos throughout the day and in the evening. I also block all social, news
and video content on my iPhone (it was very hard not to remember 4 digit
password but it eventually faded from the memory). I started reading Financial
Times and The Economist in the physical copy to get the news. I feel that my
mind functions so much better than before. The difference in productivity is
striking really.

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foxhedgehog
I understand that linking this plays into the thesis of this article, but I
just wrote a piece about how this exact phenomenon plays into the 2016
election: [https://medium.com/@2016GOPImplosion/the-new-new-
normal-d45f...](https://medium.com/@2016GOPImplosion/the-new-new-
normal-d45f12492992#.5hx46di29)

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chippy
Article is from 2013

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joe_the_user
I think every page I load with a design as bad this costs a little bit of me.

